


Periphery

by firewhiskey_ginger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Marauders (Harry Potter), Angst, Anti-Muggle Content, Canonical Character Death, Community: HPFT, Drama, F/F, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Marauders, Marauders Friendship, Marauders' Era, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Oblivious Sirius Black, Original Character Death(s), POV First Person, POV Original Female Character, Pining, Post-First War with Voldemort, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Young Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:39:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7631068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firewhiskey_ginger/pseuds/firewhiskey_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe never asked to become a member of the First Order. She didn't ask to join in the fight against Voldemort; to betray her mother's paralyzing fear of the magical world. She didn't ask to watch her friends die by their own hand. It only took standing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to change history—and history still needed a martyr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> I spent a long time on the concept of this story, and whether or not to pursue a canonical retelling of the Marauders' time from Hogwarts til their death. But after looking through the archives I've decided that this has been done--and done well--and that I wanted to explore the idea of cause-and-effect, and how something as insignificant as forgetting a book in a classroom, or a train being late, could change history.
> 
> * * *

_Chapter image by a.leksy at the Dark Arts_  

“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.” ― Sylvia Plath  
  
❇  
  
December 1981

 

The kitchen window was left open last night.Surely it was Mum in one of her sleepless ambles.Shivering, I pulled the windows in and tightened the latch.There was a dusting of snow on the sill and I pressed my fingers into it absently.Through the glass and criss-crossed iron I could see the river, a mile away, already freezing along its banks.Past that, in the village, the church steeple punctured the bellies of fat granite clouds.Only several people were braving the cold.From here they were small black dots like crows.

I glanced at my watch.It was eight o’clock and Mum and Dad would be up soon.With bare feet padding over the chilly stone, I set to making their breakfast.A quiet prayer that she remembered things today escaped me.It was easier when she remembered; it made Dad happier.

“ _Incendio._ ” 

The ancient gas stove burst to life.With the teakettle brewing I heated Mum’s cast iron skillet.Their hens’ eggs were scattered in odd places around the refrigerator, not where they should be.I at last found the butter in with the silverware.My jaw tightened; it wasn’t a good sign. 

While the pan grew hot my eyes traveled back out the window.It would snow again today, surely.Maybe I would Apparate to Godric’s Hollow rather than deal with the late trains.

My fingers gripped the counter.I hadn’t been back to the wizarding village since Lily and James’s murders.Dozens of vials, full of priceless herbs and tonics, remained there from her pregnancy.I couldn’t bring myself to reclaim them but now I had no choice.They were my livelihood; my landlord was losing patience after another late rent.

Maybe I was mad for staying in London during such times, but despite the danger I could stay hidden in plain sight.Lost in a crowd.In Godric’s Hollow there was nowhere to hide.And if the protective spells didn’t save Lily and James Potter—two of the most talented wizards of our age—then I wouldn’t stand a chance.

I cracked an egg in the pan, but the iron had grown too hot over the flame.The whites seared with a horrible sound like molten flesh.A whimper escaped me and I saw it, the scene I’d imagined over and over for weeks: James’s glasses cracked on the floor, Lily’s hair twisted around her face, almost suffocating her, their bodies hard and pale. 

And Harry.Poor baby Harry…

I threw the pan in the sink and opened the window again before the Muggle fire detector could rouse Mum and Dad.With the cold air rushing over my feverish skin I noticed, past my shaking hands, one of the eggs had splattered onto the floor.

“Chloe?”

“Mum.”I pocketed my wand before she saw.“Sorry, did I wake you?” 

She hugged a wooly cardigan tightly around her nightgown.“It’s freezing, darling.Did you forget to turn on the heat?”

I flushed because in truth I had only thought to perform a Heating Charm for myself.Old habits die hard.Before I could answer she said, “You’ve gone all pink.Sit down and let me finish.”

“All right.”Normally I would have protested, but it meant she was feeling herself today. 

“Your father is still lazing in bed, that man.But I’m sure as soon as he smells bacon…”

Reaching past me, she latched the window once more while I poured the tea.We stepped around one another with the familiarity of having spent decades in the same kitchen together, doing just this. 

Before she could set out three pieces of toast I said, “Just enough for you and Dad.I’ve got to head back to London.”

It took me less than five minutes to tell the first lie.

Mum gave me the familiar glance-over and managed to control her insistence that I eat more.In truth I _hadn’t_ been eating, but I couldn’t even begin to explain why.“Leaving so soon?”Her disappointment was audible.

I pulled the sleeves of my jumper over my knuckles, clutching the fabric tightly.“Lots of early Christmas orders to manage.I’m up to my eyeballs in poinsettia deliveries.”  


Two lies.

“But I can come and visit you over the weekend,” I added upon her silent nod.“I heard Dad say the sheep fence needs rebuilding.It’d be better to finish before the next big snow.”

“Chloe, I hardly think you’re the man for the job,” she tutted, waving her spatula at my stature.

“Well, Mum, I _do_ have one advantage…”At her silence I continued gently, “Only a few levitating spells, I promise.It wouldn’t take five minutes and it would save Dad a lot of back pain, and you wouldn’t have to hire one of the neighbors.”

“We’ll see.” 

The room was silent other than the crackling of eggs and bacon.The smell would normally send my stomach rumbling, but I could barely manage to swallow my tea these days.I tried another sip but it tasted like iron.

She would barely meet my eyes.“Speaking of… _that…_ One of your owls came by very late last night.I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Oh.”I tried to even my voice, but my throat was already filling with bile. 

Not only was my mother awake all night, the paranoia and insomnia eating away at her, but the Order knew not to send owls here.If someone only had time to scribble on a parchment, the message could not have been a good one. 

I swallowed thickly.“Where is it?”

“On the little table near the sofa.I didn’t read it, you know.”

Despite feeling of a frightened bird being trapped in my chest, I stood behind her and squeezed her arms.“I know you didn’t, Mum.”I pressed my trembling lips to her grey hair.

The arched doorway to the den looked like a mouth waiting to swallow me whole.The room was pitch black, the curtains drawn as usual.More than anything I wanted to use a _Lumos_ spell.I knew better.When I flicked on the lamp I spotted the parchment envelope on the pile of unopened post.It contrasted with the the colorful grocery coupons and the newspapers where the pictures didn’t move.There was no writing on the envelope; the seal bore no emblem.Quickly I tore it open.

It was Sirius’s handwriting; I would recognize that scrawling anywhere.I swallowed the knot in my throat.Now wasn’t the time for such things.The letter contained only two sentences.

_Marlene is dead._

_Come here as soon as you read this._

It wasn’t how it was with the news of Lily and James.The room wasn’t spinning; I didn’t have to run and be sick in the bin.It felt like the walls were expanding around me, or like I was growing smaller.The silence was becoming a sound itself, a kind of pressure in my eardrums.

Dead.

Marlene McKinnon, my best friend, was dead.She had more than likely been murdered by supporters of You-Know-Who.And we hadn’t been speaking to each other for over a month.

“Anything important?” 

Mum peered into the dimness as if afraid to come in.She might as well have been staring into the portal to another world: mine.No matter what I told her, she could never possibly understand the contents of the letter.And she wouldn’t want to.

“Just my flatmate.”My voice was surprisingly strong.

Three lies. 

“I’ve got to head back.There’s been some kind of problem with our heating.Reckon she didn’t leave the faucet running and our pipes have burst.”I was speaking faster and faster, trying to remember where I’d left my bloody coat and suitcase and wishing I could just use a Summoning Spell.My Mum watched helplessly, unconvinced, but unwilling to ask more. 

With my wool coat and scarf thrown on haphazardly, I pressed another kiss to her cheek.“Tell Dad that I’m sorry I missed him, and that I’ll be back on Friday.Call you tomorrow!”

Her uneasily murmured “Alright, dear,” barely reached my ears before I was out the door.My feet were suddenly stinging with cold; I had forgotten to put on my boots.But there was no time to go back inside.My heaving breath billowed before me and I pulled my body from the steadfastness of the door, walking only quickly enough to not raise suspicion.She was certainly watching from behind closed curtains.

The dirt drive to our house was long and winding, and as soon as I passed the first bend beside the pasture I fell into the snow.The sheep watched me with their black watery eyes, uninterested, and in my wildness I envied them.I couldn’t breathe.My lungs had collapsed and wouldn’t open again; the sobs were too heavy, and only when I thought I would pass out did the first rattling breath come sweeping into the vacuum of my lungs.With my cheek pressed into the snow I cried and thought of Marlene, and the last time I saw her: the way her white-blonde hair whipped through space as she Apparated, with a thunderous _CRACK!,_ away from Sirius’s Cruciatus Curse.

 


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then he reached over and tucked a lock of curly hair behind her ear, and I knew that we would be joining them, no matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter contains fairly graphic depictions of violence and might be uncomfortable for some readers.

_ chapter image by foggy at The Dark Arts _ 

“I never dreamed the sea so deep,  
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,  
I have become another child.  
I wake to see the world go wild.”  
  
― Allen Ginsberg

❇

1975

“See?He’s staring at me again, I _told_ you.”Emily was flushed pink as she leaned across the Hufflepuff table.“Look!”

Over the rim of my brass goblet I had a clear view of Michael Flint, the most recent object of Emily’s affection.He was indeed staring at the back of her head from his place amidst the other Slytherins.

I took a drink of pumpkin juice.Michael Flint was rumored to be in the Black Adder Society, a secret club for Hogwarts elite.Personally I found the name a bit far-fetched—how dangerous could a group of seventeen year-old socialites be?As far as everyone knew, all they did was sit in their nice robes and grumble about the number of Muggleborn students admitted each year. 

Emily was waiting for congratulations, so I settled with, “Bit sudden, isn’t it?You two have barely spoken over the last seven years.”

“Not true!He asked to borrow my quill last week, but I _saw_ one in his backpack.He just wanted an excuse to talk to me.”She giggled behind her hand, a trademark gesture born from a mother who didn’t like toothy girls.Emily did have large teeth, but telling that to a twelve year-old was one of my aunt’s less kind moments.

“Well, good for you.” 

“I reckon those wonder bras are working after all,” she added.Another of Annabeth Brighton’s habits: owling her teenage daughter figure-shaping lingerie.Even I had received some over the years, but I was as flat-chested as a boy.If my Mum, her sister, even _imagined_ that I saw my body as anything other than something to remain covered, she would have estranged Annabeth.

“I reckon,” I said, my gaze already sliding to my Herbology textbook on the table.It appeared to be full of confetti, I had bookmarked so many pages. 

I opened my mouth to explain that Professor Sprout would be expecting me in the greenhouses, but just then a parchment, folded into a bird shape, came soaring over us and landed on Emily’s plate.

She gasped and I blinked.Gingerly extracting the note from a pool of gravy, she held it up to the light as if it were a relic form Tutankhamen’s tomb.“It’s from him,” she said very seriously.

This time I blatantly stared at Michael Flint.He certainly _was_ one of the more handsome Seventh-Years, and his smirk wasn’t helping matters.Our eyes met and the heat rose to my throat.Blinking furiously I looked down at the table.“What does it say?”

“Oh my god.”Her hand was to her chest.“There’s a party tonight.He’s invited me—but of course you’ll come.”

“Sorry, what?”But she only read the note over and over.“You know I have my apprenticeship on Fridays.I should already be at the greenhouses—”

Her hand shot across the table, clenching mine fiercely.“Chloe, _please_.Tell Sprout that you’re ill.Come with me tonight and I promise, I will never ask you for anything ever again.”

“I dunno.”I again glanced at my textbook.Tonight we were supposed to plant the Fanged Geranium bulbs that the rest of our class would tend during the semester.Being able to examine the plants’ behavior from the beginning would give me a leg up on my coursework…

Emily squared her shoulders indignantly, her face changing to haughtiness as she sniffed, “Fine.I’ll go by myself.But don’t blame me when you spend the rest of your Sixth Year without any friends.”

She was impossible when she got like this.Ever since we were children, when I didn’t want to do something—climb a too-tall tree, or walk past a group of snickering boys—she would turn nasty, the way her mother did to her. 

I would like to say that they didn’t, but tonight her words stung.For the most part I didn’t mind that my sole companions at Hogwarts were my cousin and my pet cat.“I _have_ friends, they just graduated last year,” I reminded her sullenly.

“Of course, how could I forget?Chloe’s too smart to spend time with people in her own year.”

I didn’t dignify it with a response.In a flurry of robes, she gathered her things, leaving her plate.“I’m not hungry anymore.I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Emily, wait,” I sighed and she froze, a hopeful look on her face.She knew what she was doing and I fell for it every time.“I’ll come with you.”

“Oh, thank you!” she clapped her hands together, all smiles again.“You won’t regret it.”

She snatched the quill resting on my Herbology book, reading out loud as she scribbled, “ _Sounds brilliant… See you then… Chloe will be joining us._ ”When she tapped the parchment with her wand it went sailing across the Great Hall to the Slytherin table.We watched Michael as he unfolded the note; the two girls on either side of him read it over his shoulders.I didn’t like the way he was looking at us.

❇

It took three cups of strong tea to keep me awake until midnight.I never stayed up late unless distracted by homework.Emily was completely wired, her leg jiggling anxiously as we sat before the common room fireplace.As the hours waned the other students meandered to the dormitories, one by one.When the House Prefect, Melinda Abbott, finally retired it was with a wary eye in our direction. 

My heart was hammering.I’d never so much as had a sip of alcohol in my time at Hogwarts, or cut class, and had certainly never snuck out.I hadn’t even bothered to change out of my uniform, unlike Emily, who was overdressed in blue taffeta. 

The whole “party scene” at Hogwarts just didn’t make sense.I’d heard stories of a group of Gryffindor boys—James Potter and some others—that wreaked havoc in the corridors after nightfall, but never saw how anyone could get away with such things.Filch and Mrs. Norris were always patrolling, not to mention the ghosts, and the Head Boy and Girl.Emily and I didn’t even have a _plan;_ we were just hoping to not get caught.

I waited until Melinda’s bedroom door clicked shut.“If I lose my apprenticeship because of this—”

“Come on,” Emily whispered.“Let’s go now.”

The corridors were eerie in the quiet dark.At times Hogwarts felt as much a comforting home as it did unsettlingly creepy.The flickering torches cast moving shadows on the sculptures, bringing them to life.Emily’s dress shoes were clacking too loudly on the floors and we quickly cast a Silencing Charm. 

“I can’t believe you’re actually wearing your _uniform_ to a party, honestly,” she whispered.

Each turn brought my heart pounding up into my throat, for fear of someone waiting with a week’s worth of detentions.Halfway through our journey we were nearly caught in the silvery light of the Fat Friar, on his way to the kitchens, where I’d heard he liked to look at the food he could no longer eat. 

Just when I thought we’d been tiptoeing for ages, we stopped.We were in the middle of nowhere, near the dungeons.Before us hung an enormous painting: three waterfalls cascading into a blue lake, where mermaids dove or lazed about.

“This can’t be right,” I said.“There’s no one here.”

Emily scowled and examined Michael note again.“I don’t understand…”

_We’ve been tricked, you idiot._  

Not only had I missed my apprenticeship, but I’d be dead tired for early morning Potions.But I was also relieved.I wouldn’t be spending tonight listening to thinly-veiled prejudice about my heritage.

Then, voices were suddenly bouncing off the stone.Around the corner came Michael Flint, chatting loudly with two other Slytherins: the girls from the Great Hall.Michael opened his arms toward us.“Ah, you made it!”

“ _Shhh_!” I hissed.I could practically hear Emily cringe with embarrassment.

Michael laughed.“No need to worry, ladies.We’ve rigged this entire wing with Silencing Charms.Nobody can hear us, unless they’ve been invited tonight.”

Somehow I doubted that the magical prowess of three seventeen year-olds could in any way stand up that of Hogwarts staff.But I held my tongue.With a wink Michael approached the painting and said, to one of the mermaids, “Gonna let us in then, darling?”

I glanced at Emily, but she was completely starstruck.The mermaid giggled but an older, heavier one eyed us disapprovingly.I wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t rat on us.

The young mermaid’s voice sounded like a three-part singing harmony.“One last time, I suppose.”

Then, with a loud creak, the painting swung open and revealed what appeared to be an old bathhouse.Steam billowed out into the corridor, dampening my face. I could see the outline of another student through the mugginess—odd that someone had been waiting alone in such a place.The baths were lit by a single torch, its orange haze contrasting with the blue moonlight streaming through the glass ceiling. 

Emily clutched fistfuls of her now apparently useless party dress.Certainly if we were heading into the baths it wouldn’t be to keep our clothes on.

_“_ It’s not too late to leave _,”_ I whispered to her.

But the others were watching us expectantly, waiting. 

“Um, Michael,” she said.“Not to be a drag, but exactly what kind of party…?” 

His perfect teeth glinted in the torchlight.“What, don’t fancy a swim?You can leave your knickers on, we won’t tell.”

Then he reached over and tucked a lock of curly hair behind her ear, and I knew that we would be joining them, no matter what.Behind him the two girls were watching with hard smirks.I felt sick but Emily took my hand, pulling me—she knew I would run if I could—through the entrance.

Moments later everyone had shed down to their undergarments, and I remained glued to my spot against the wall.When Michael helped Emily unzip her dress I looked away sharply, but she only laughed in delighted shock.

“C’mon then, Chloe, is it?” said one of the girls.Until now they had only been murmuring with one another.I didn’t know her name but had noticed her short black haircut in the corridors.“Don’t be a prude.We won’t even be able to see you.”

“Her nickers probably go past her knees anyway,” murmured her friend, and they shrieked with laughter.

I searched for Emily, but she was already following Michael into the water, hopping in with a little yelp.

“Here, does this help?”The black-haired girl waved her wand.To my complete mortification I realized she was naked, right before she murmured, “ _Nox._ ” 

The single burning torch was extinguished.Whoops and shouts bounced off the walls as we were blanketed in darkness.While I stood blinking, someone shoved me into the warm waters, uniform and all.I came up sputtering, not the strongest of swimmers, and the cackling that echoed off the walls made my eyes sting with embarrassment.

“We _told_ you your clothes would get wet,” taunted the boy who had been waiting for us.His drawling Liverpool accent was familiar.

Michael said haughtily, “So, what do you think of our little hangout?”

I only clenched my teeth, trying to find the edge of the pool.Emily sighed, “Brilliant,” but I heard nervousness in her voice.

The painting had been left open.If I pulled myself out of the water right now, I would have a clear shot to run away.It would be humiliating, and wouldn’t help the friendlessness that Emily was so keen to point out.But I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread in my stomach.Surely this was some kind of a meeting for the Black Adder Society.And they _despised_ people like Emily and me. 

The girls were whispering again.I didn’t like the way they were looking at Emily, or that they were the only ones whose wands were resting on the edge of the pool. 

Why did they need their wands? 

Emily herself was oblivious, leaning against the concrete beside Michael, their shoulders almost touching.I wouldn’t leave without her.

“Oh no, Emily!” I whined, “I forgot the Firewhiskey.”

She looked at me, confused.“ _You_ don’t have Firewhiskey.”

“I do!It’s under my bed.”I hoped they couldn’t hear the shaking in my voice.“I was saving it for Halloween, but why not tonight?Will you come with me to get it?”

She only stared and I prayed that, for once in her life, she would just listen to me.“I just feel like we should _really_ have some,” I pressed.

“Seems like a long walk for some Firewhiskey,” murmured the gangly boy.He had moved startlingly closer and I recognized him: a Seventh-Year with stringy black hair, who I sometimes caught scowling at me for no apparent reason.His name was Walden Macnair.

“Not at all!” I reached for the pool’s ledge.I’d have to find a Prefect and come back for Emily.“I’ll be right back—”

One of the girls slashed her wand in the air, and the painting banged shut.My heart stopped.Nobody spoke.The trickling of water and my heavy, nervous breath were the only sounds. 

Michael’s voice cut cheerfully through the darkness.“Well Emily, I’ll admit we had a special reason to ask you here tonight.You see, our parents—” he gestured amongst his housemates “—they’re all good friends.And they have one _particular_ friend in common.”

Her brow was knit in confusion, but I knew which “friend” he meant.His name was once whispered fearfully by professors; by people huddled in the rain around damp newspapers; over the crackling airwaves of the Wizarding Wireless Network.But nobody spoke his true name anymore.

Followers of _Him_ hadn’t permeated the walls of Hogwarts yet.But there was a first time for everything.

I swallowed loudly and several of them laughed.“ _She’s_ caught on,” said Macnair with his yellow-toothed grin.

“I don’t understand,” whimpered Emily. 

I splashed wildly towards her.“We need to—”

But I was grabbed, on either side, by the girls.Emily made a low whining noise in her throat, and I wished she would _move,_ or do _something._ But Michael seized her shoulders, his knuckles white, fingers digging into her skin. 

“We heard that your Mum’s not _like_ my friends and me, Emily.And that makes _you_ not like us.Isn’t that right?”

Annabeth Brighton was a Muggle.She married a Wizard, my uncle, but that wasn’t enough for them.Emily still wasn’t a Pureblood.

“Emily, get out!” I tried to escape their hold, but I’d always been slight, not very strong; right now I was cursing myself for it.Their tugging sent my head underwater and my shout was garbled. 

Michael was murmuring a spell I couldn’t hear.The tip of his wand was glowing like a cigarette.Not with sparks or light: it was smoldering _,_ fire-hot, burnishing orange.It reflected off of his water-slick skin; glinted in his eyes.Our shouts ricocheted for nobody to hear as I fought against my captors, only to be pushed underwater again—this time held there, the breath billowing from me.

When I resurfaced, coughing, throat burning, something had changed.Emily was still shouting but her tone was different.There was accusation in her voice. 

Blinking the water from my eyes, I realized she was jabbing a finger at me.Her voice was unlike I had ever heard before.“It’s true! _She’s_ the Mudblood! _Both_ of her parents are Muggles!”

It felt like my bones had fallen out of my body.

“No,” I murmured, but Michael had already abandoned her, fighting through the water towards me.His wand was held high over his head, brandished like a sword, showering sparks that burst into steam when they reached water.A large hand—Macnair’s—was around my throat.The last thing I saw before he pulled me under was Emily, scrambling from the pool, running for the exit.She was leaving me.

I thought I was going to die.

And maybe it was worse that I didn’t; that I felt the girls’ sharp fingernails dragging my skin as they pulled my shirt over my ribs; that I heard them say, “Do it somewhere nobody will see!”I was choking on my own sobs and on the water, twisting my body wildly as my schoolmates bore the soft white flesh of my belly.

Something tugged at the corner of my vision: a student staring wide-eyed into the baths.Emily?No, Emily was gone.She had to help.I sucked in a breath but my words turned into a long howl.Michael, the boy who had smiled at me in the Great Hall only hours before, bore the point of his wand down on my skin, and oh God I could hear the flesh searing.My legs thrashed and I kicked him; he cursed, spraying me with his saliva as he dragged the trail of fire over my abdomen.

And then as if I’d imagined it all, suddenly it was over.Their grips released.It was like being let go in midair and I was left falling, floating.The splashing was deafening as they hurried out of the waters.I remained on my back, staring at the dark sky through the glass as they hastily gathered their clothing, snapping at one another.

“What if she tells somebody?”

“She won’t.”

“How d’you—”

“Look at her.She won’t.”

“Well let’s _hurry the fuck up before somebody finds her_ , then.”

And then there was silence.

❇

The walls were cool under my palm as I staggered, soaked to my bones, through the corridors.My free hand was trembling where it hovered above my wound.As if cradling it would help.Sweat was sticking my fringe to my forehead and I pushed it from my eyes.How long could I last, wandering like this?I couldn’t remember how the way to the Hufflepuff basement. 

But I couldn’t go back, I realized.Emily would be there. 

In fact I could probably never look her in the eye again.

I had waited for her, floating in the waters for ages, then dragging myself to lie on the floor, until I finally accepted that Emily was not coming back.She had fed me to the wolves.

Shaking the thought, I glanced up to the path before me.“ _Damn it_.”

The only way to continue was up long flight of stairs.I gripped the banister and took several steadying breaths.But just the first step sent my wound searing and I cried out, slumping against the wall.Panting, I felt the hot tears spilling and angrily smeared them away.When I opened my eyes there were two bleary shadows at the top of the staircase.

I froze, nearly sick with fear.But it wasn’t Michael or the others.It was a girl and boy, the latter folding up a large parchment and stowing it in his robes.They looked just as nervous be caught exploring after hours.

When he realized I was no threat, the boy called, “Gone for a swim, love?”

“Shut up, I think she’s hurt,” his companion said in her Irish accent.“Are you all right?”

“F-fine,” I said, sounding anything but.My throat was scratchy with the water I’d inhaled.

But she was already hurrying down the staircase with light footsteps, and he trailed after, looking trepidatious.When they neared I recognized his face: he was one of James Potter’s friends.Their little group was notorious for sneaking out after hours.Fearing another encounter with a secret club, I recoiled, and the girl furrowed her brow. 

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

I wanted to push past them but could barely move.She shook her head of white-blond hair.“No, you’re hurt.Who did this to you?”

My breath caught in my throat.

_“What if she tells somebody?”_

_“Look at her.She won’t.”_

“It was too dark, I couldn’t tell,” I lied.“It was just someone playing a prank.They pushed me in the water.”

“In the baths?”The boy’s voice was low with recognition.My face must have held the answer; they exchanged a long glance.

“Well if this was who I _think_ it was, then you’re going to the hospital wing.”The girl held her arm out for me.“C’mon, you won’t be in trouble.”

“We think,” the boy muttered.But under her withering look he offered an arm.Glancing helplessly between the two, I realized that there was no other feasible option.

“Okay, but I’m really fine— _agh!”_ They lifted me up to the next step; I bit my lip hard to silence the cry.Another dark look was cast above my head and mercifully they chose not to speak.We climbed tediously, my panting breath the only sound.After what felt like ages we arrived at the bottom of the stairs to the hospital wing.

The girl ordered, “Stay here.I’ll have Pomfrey bring a bed down.”She disappeared up the staircase, leaving me slumped against James Potter’s friend.My head was spinning.But even teetering on the edge of unconsciousness I couldn’t be so close to a boy.I stepped away, leaning heavily against the wall and holding my side.

He nodded his dark-haired head at the wound.“What’s that?”

I jerked my hand away, but it revealed in the torchlight what I hadn’t seen before: blood seeping through my uniform.His eyes widened and I drew my still-wet cloak around me, swaying. 

“You should sit down.”

“‘M fine.”

“No, you’re bloody well _not_ … Careful!”He was suddenly moving; in fact, the whole corridor was.The ceiling was where the floor should be. 

My vision dissolved to blackness and for a moment I saw nothing, my ears felt stuffed with cotton.When I blinked the darkness away I had fallen over.His arms were hooked under mine to stop me from hitting the floor.As he gently lowered me down, whispering, “ _Merlin_ ,” the strain sent fire across my skin again.I dropped to the marble and curled into a ball.

I dully registered him kneel beside me, a hand on my shoulder.“Hey,” he said anxiously.“You alright?”

“Fantastic,” I grumbled, cheek against the floor. 

I think I heard him chuckle.His hand remained on my shoulder.

Then two pairs of feet were hurrying down the staircase, and the young girl called, “Here she is!”I opened my eyes and saw Madame Pomfrey, her hair in rollers, levitating a comfortable looking bed.

“I’ll skip the questions of why you were out after hours, Miss McKinnon,” she said tersely.“But don’t be surprised if you hear from the Deputy Headmistress tomorrow.”

The boy groaned.“Come on, can’t you cut us some slack?We’re your best patrons.”

All three of them helped to gingerly lift me off the floor.Holding my heels, Pomfrey said, “I highly doubt depleting my store of Bone-Regrowing Potions and Sober-Up Draughts qualifies you as being the ‘best,’ Black.

“Now,” she looked at me squarely, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead.“Let’s get you looked at, shall we?”

I nodded, feeling self-conscious as they all stood over me, but the corners of my vision were going dark again.With eyelids drooping I tried to focus on McKinnon, to thank her for helping me, but my body was so heavy…

❇

I awoke in a bed of white linen, a partition pulled shut around me.The hospital wing was dead silent.Through the gap in the curtain I saw that the sky still dark; a clock on the bedside table revealed it was four in the morning.With a flush I realized I no longer wearing my own clothes.Someone, hopefully Madame Pomfrey, had changed me into a thin blue hospital gown.She must have given me a potion as well; the burning in my side had become a dull ache.

I waited, but heard no movement.Pomfrey must have been asleep.Morbid curiosity finally got the best of me, and I pulled my dressing gown over my ribs.A thick white bandage the size of my palm was Spellotaped to my side.It bore a faint pink stain, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.Cautiously I peeled back the tape and gasped.

The burn was a deep, furious red—almost black.It wasn’t in the hurried shape of someone trying to leave a random scar.It had purpose.The mark was a giant, clearly-written “M.”

For Mudblood.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It felt like there were two parts of me: a fledgeling one, weak but sunny, here in this room with these strangers, and another that was buried within the thoughts pushed into the back of my skull. They were like two plants growing from the same seed; borne of the same source and fighting to survive over the other.

  _Chapter image by arietty. at The Dark Arts_

“It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”  
— Charlotte Brontë,  _Jane Eyre_  
  
❇

The morning was grey and windy.The hours crept by and I scarcely moved, save for turning my head to the rain-beaten window.Through the rippling glass I could see the stone archway at the edge of the courtyard.Students hurried under Rain-Repellant Charms; the odd First-Year hid beneath a Muggle umbrella.They seemed to be eons away from the silence of the Hospital Wing.I was missing Potions, my second most-valued class after Herbology, and I couldn’t bring myself to worry.

I felt nothing.

Eventually Pomfrey came to stand over me, eyeing the untouched jam and toast on the bedside table.“It’s time for your tonic, dear.”

I took the proffered cup gingerly, peering inside the pewter vessel.“Shrivelfig and knotgrass.”

Her eyebrows lifted.“Yes, that’s right.You knew that only by its scent?” 

As I sipped from the cup I think I nodded; at least I meant to.Though anticipated the bitterness made my nose crinkle.Madame Pomfrey was looking at me with such pity that my face flushed in embarrassment.

“Now, about your injury…” she began uneasily.“A fair amount of spells and potions will help reduce the scarring, but unless you really keep up with them—and I mean _really—_ I’m afraid it will leave a mark.”

The cup nearly slipped from my hands.There must have been some dark magic in Michael’s spell; a tarry blackness that couldn’t be reversed.And now, every time I changed my uniform in the morning, or bathed, or reached for a tall shelf in the greenhouse, there it would be.For the rest of my life.

“Miss Fairchild, I’ve spoken with the Deputy Headmistress.She’d like to talk with you about what happened.”

“Oh.”I sank into the pillows, wishing they would swallow me.“But I don’t remember.” 

The words had been said so many times that even I was starting to believe them.

Despite her obvious doubt, Pomfrey’s voice was gentle.“Of course.She just wants to help you.We all do.”

I nodded numbly, holding the warm cup close: a simple mistake.The steam dampened my face and suddenly I was pulled into the memory behind my eyelids.The painting swinging open, mist billowing into the corridor, settling onto my cheeks.The echoing _zzzzt!_ of dress zippers. The torch extinguishing.Cold hard moon.Hands shoving; falling into water chest-deep; same hands gripping my arms; fingers around my throat; the wand burning like a cigarette—

“Did you hear me, dear?” Madame Pomfrey was saying, her brow furrowed.“You have a _visitor.”_

I resurfaced from the memory like it were miles underwater, back into the still grey morning of the Hospital Wing.I murmured an unheard, “ _No—_ ”

But Emily had already appeared from behind the partition, walking like a death row victim.A stringy bouquet of flowers—some small white blossoms and one large, orange lily—was in her hand.

“Hi, Chloe,” she said quietly.

I looked away.

“Well.I’ll just find a vase for those,” Pomfrey said before quickly disappearing.

Emily’s chin was lowered and I felt her gaze boring into me; I knew that her lips were parted around her teeth.Until now they had been just another of her traits, but today they were infuriating in their largeness.I wanted to hurl the bedside clock into them.But I only looked pointedly out the window with my stomach in knots.

“I brought you some flowers,” she said—stupidly, I thought, as they’d already been mentioned.At my silence she lowered her voice.“I had to go into the Forbidden Forest to get them.I’ve fed Bijou too.She was clawing on the bedsheets this morning, so I reckoned…”

I wished the cat had clawed her instead.

“What, are you going to ignore me forever?”

Nothing.

“Look, I’m _sorry—_ ”

I finally cut my gaze to her.“Why didn’t you come back for me?”

For once in her life, Emily was silent.

“I know that you couldn’t have fought them all.We were outnumbered.But you could have at least _tried_ , like I did.You didn’t even come back to help me!You _left_ me there!”

“I was _going_ to come back—”

“No you weren’t!Don’t lie to me!” 

Pomfrey looked up sharply from her desk.I swallowed against the rush of curses on my tongue as she returned to place a glass vase on the nightstand.Under her pointed gaze Emily placed the flowers in the vessel, her head down.The seconds ticked by. 

“Please, Chloe,” Emily whispered when Pomfrey left us.Fat tears were falling down her cheeks.“I _said_ I’m sorry.”

The worst part was that I could have showed her: cinched up my hospital gown, pulled away the bandage and made her see the mark I was given; the one meant for her.My _brand._ Like I was one of the cattle my father raised.But I didn’t want Emily to know my secret, or to grant her some kind of catharsis.I didn't want her guilt, her tears, or her apologies.

“Please leave.”I turned my face to the window again. 

I heard her sniffling and blubbering with what might have been real emotion.But I didn’t care. When her figure slumped away from the corner of my vision I called, “You should wash your hands.Those lilies are poisonous.”

As her footsteps faded I stared at the large bloom in the vase, its orange hue so violent that it seemed to be humming.

❇

“Well, you’ve done a real number on yourself this time.”

“Yeah, you look like _shit_ , mate.”

A tired chuckle.“Thank you for the kind words, as always, James.”

Though the voices were lowered, I could hear them clearly amidst the quiet.Lying on my side I could see through a tiny opening in the partition: another bed, across the room, was occupied.I wondered how long he had been there.Did he hear my exchange with Emily, or worse, with McGonagall? 

After an uncomfortable, fruitless conversation with the Deputy Headmistress, I had promptly pretended to fall asleep.It had worked: the questioning stopped.Nobody seemed to want to say the words, “ _Who did this to you_?” but their gentle side-stepping and furrowed brows and shared glances of concern made it clear.Nobody believed that this was an accident, or that I couldn’t remember what happened.But unless they gave me Veritaserum, they would never know.

I didn’t want _anyone_ to ever know.

The rain had stopped, the heavy winds pushing away fat clouds so that the sun was nearly able to break through.My curtain blocked the other patient from view, but I could glimpse fragments of several others, standing at the foot of his bed. 

“Need us to bring you any notes?” another voice came eagerly.

“He doesn’t want _your_ notes, Wormtail.They’ve always got crumbs on them.”

There was a shuffling, as if someone had been pushed.“Stop being such a child, Sirius.”

“Sorry.”

My heart quickened.I recognized his name, and her lilting Irish accent.It was my rescuers from last night. 

Facing them in the corridors had been somewhere in the back of my mind, behind all the fog and clouds of the past twelve hours.But it hadn’t sent my heart hammering before now.How was I supposed to continue after this?Every time we passed in the corridors I would shrivel away.Not to mention seeing Michael Flint—

I swallowed against the bile in my throat.

“Hello?”

The call came from just beyond my partition.It was McKinnon.I froze, my damp palms clenching the bedsheets, my heart beating in my eardrums.And then, to my regret, I said, “Yes?”

“It’s Marlene,” she said.Marlene McKinnon.I had heard her name before.“Can I come in?”

I swallowed.“Okay.”

A hand appeared and gently parted the curtain.In the light of day, without the threat of losing consciousness, I did recognize her from classes.She had a slight build, and was only a bit taller than myself, with unruly white-blonde hair and a long nose.I knew why I remembered her: she was beautiful in a cunning way.

“How’re you feeling?I’ve brought you some notes from today.”

I spotted the bundle of parchment in her arms and something welled up in my throat.“Thank you,” I croaked.

The bed shifted under her weight.“I hope they’re alright.Professor Sprout said that Herbology and Potions are your best subjects.”

I nodded.I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, pale blue and ringed in smoky black. But the seconds ticked by and she only said, “Is there anything else you need?”

_A Timeturner._

“No, this is perfect, thank you.I should be leaving in a few hours to catch History of Magic.” 

Her smile was dimpled and revealed a row of small straight teeth.Not like Emily’s at all.“All right.Hey, maybe you could help me with Herbology sometime.I’m dreadful, but I hear you’re quite the prodigy.”

It wasn’t a request for help: she was _offering_. 

She wasn’t a person who would ask questions.She was someone to spend time with, away from whoever landed me in the Hospital Wing.I could feel my cheeks tinging with pink again under her straightforward gaze, but I was grateful. 

“Of course.I’d love to.”

She clapped a hand on my ankle in a friendly way, giving it a little shake.“Brilliant!”

Marlene’s smile was infectious.I returned it, the crinkling of my cheeks an almost unfamiliar feeling at this point.None of the others even seemed to notice me, chatting with their friend across the room.It made me feel relieved and lonely all at once.

“You must be exhausted,” she said.“Sorry to pester you, I just needed a moment of sane conversation.This lot can be a bit much.”

She tipped her head behind her, in the direction of the boys, who were now managing to cause a ruckus in the Hospital Wing.James Potter was making a show of noisily trying to kiss the bedridden boy better, as he weakly fought him off through fits of laughter.

“Stop fighting it, Remus!”

Of course it was Remus Lupin who was in the hospital.He’d always been sickly.Once I witnessed him topple over in the corridor between classes.But he must have gotten into a fight this time: his head, arm, and hands were heavily bandaged.

“I would imagine they are,” I agreed.

Laughing alongside James and Remus was Peter Pettigrew, who had been my Potions partner on more than one occasion.He was quite unskilled and Professor Slughorn often paired us together in the hopes that Peter would learn something.They were an odd group, I always thought.They seemed to think they had run of the school, when really it was people like Michael Flint and the Black Adder Society who got away with whatever they wanted.

An involuntary shiver rattled me.Marlene’s brow wrinkled but then we were distracted again by James, who was on all fours over Remus’s bed.He withstood only a moment before Pomfrey was rushing over. 

“I ask that you _don’t_ terrorize my patients, Potter!”She swatted him with a rolled-up parchment.“Out, the lot of you!Mister Lupin needs to rest.”

“And I was just trying to kiss him goodnight!”

But clearly this kind of ridiculousness was exactly what Remus needed.He looked better than he had only moments ago, a flush returned to his cheeks as he laughed behind Pomfrey’s back.

Marlene snorted, “Reckon we’re off, then.”

“I think that was record time for being kicked out of the Hospital Wing,” I said. 

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

It felt like there were two parts of me: a fledgeling one, weak but sunny, here in this room with these strangers, and another that was buried within the thoughts pushed into the back of my skull.They were like two plants growing from the same seed; borne of the same source and each fighting to survive over the other.

“Marlene!” cried James theatrically, hand extended as if summoning a spirit from the dead.Our eyes met briefly but there was no recognition.

She rolled her eyes grandiosely and said, “Idiots.”But she was beaming.

When she shifted her weight I suddenly noticed the tall frame of Sirius Black, leaned against the wall.He had been hidden before.His uniform barely met dress code, tie untied and shirtsleeves pushed past his elbows.He must have recognized me—or _something—_ because his grey eyes were glimmering in the shadows, boring into me.It felt like he had caught me naked.

No boy had ever looked at me that way before.

I looked away and back again, but he was still staring.Then his face broke into a bright grin as if he had no control over himself.Something stirred in my ribcage and I swallowed thickly. 

But, with a wave of embarrassment, I realized that Sirius wasn't looking at me—not at all.He was looking at Marlene, eyes following her as she stood up to place her notes on my nightstand.

Of course.The way he was so willing to help me last night, because she ordered it.And just now he had stopped teasing Peter about his notes—because she had scolded him.I had only seen the two of them together twice, and it was clear: Sirius Black was smitten.

Marlene was oblivious, her back to him.I dully registered her saying, “Just send me an owl when you’ve got the time to study.I could use all the help I can get.”

I hoped she didn’t notice the color in my cheeks.“Alright.”Sirius had strode away to rejoin James and Peter.His absence made it so that I could find my words again, “Thank you, Marlene.Really.”

The sun had broken from behind a cloud, for only a moment, but it sent her whole person glowing like a Patronus.She really _was_ beautiful. 

“Any time,” she said.

❇

I chose to return to my dormitory when most students would be in classes.I didn’t want to encounter anyone on the walk through the corridors; not even Marlene.Pomfrey had given me another strong potion, and she was anxious for me to return on my own, but at last agreed that I could manage. 

I changed back into the uniform I wore the night before.The bloodstains had been _Tergio_ ’d but a faint pink remained.With a tight-lipped smile Pomfrey gave me a week’s worth of potions and released me.The question was still in her eyes:

_Who did this, Chloe?_

The walk was tedious.The portraits watched me with interest, but even they were ignored.By then, the Potion had worn off enough to elicit pain, and all I wanted to do was run to the safety of my four-poster.With tiny steps I trekked throughout the castle, taking a longer route to avoid nearing the Slytherin dungeons. 

The Hufflepuff common room was not completely empty, to my dismay, but its sparse occupants barely raised their heads at me.Word must not have gotten out.I hoped that by some miracle it would stay that way. 

The door to the Sixth-Year girls’ dormitory creaked open and I stood on its threshold until I was sure it was empty.Emily was in Divination, I knew, and that was what mattered most. 

Bijou was on my bed, and stood and stretched at the sound of the door.An owl would have been much more practical for a First-Year, but my Muggle parents assumed that all witches had cats.When our neighbor’s cat had its litter, I chose the only calico amidst the spots and solids. 

Bijou hopped down and curled around my feet, purring, but I only stood motionless.I couldn’t lift her into my arms or bend to scratch her head. 

And I couldn’t go to my lessons today, I realized.Part of me had believed that I would attend Defense Against the Dark Arts, but I couldn’t be around hexes and curses.I didn’t know when I could ever be.Pushing the thought away, I moved to my four-poster and tugged the curtains shut.I didn’t disrobe until I was cocooned in darkness.I didn’t want to see what had become of my bare skin.

With Bijou curling in circles at the foot of my bed I drew the covers back.I wasn’t tired.But all I wanted was to be asleep.As I slid into bed my arm brushed against something leafy—I could tell by its texture that it was a flower.Another apology from Emily, surely.

“ _Lumos._ ”

With my shrouded four-poster illuminated in white light, I froze.The flower was a single black rhododendron.In floriography, or the cryptic communication using flowers, a rhododendron meant danger.Beware. _I’m watching._ But surely I was being paranoid.These secret messages had died out after the Victorian period.Nobody used the language anymore.

Unless they knew that I would understand.

My last remaining hope that I was wrong—that it was another pathetic attempt at an apology from Emily—was destroyed when I spotted the note.It was tied around the stem with a crimson ribbon.With a trembling hand I gingerly lifted the flower in the wandlight.It wilted in my hand, petals falling like ashes.The note was only three letters; a signature, I realized.Neat, looping script on a torn scrap of parchment: _B.A.S._

Black Adder Society.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So you two are boyfriend and girlfriend, then.”
> 
> But the words didn’t sound casual at all. They sounded like I was struggling to speak a foreign language, and oh God, she could tell. Marlene could tell that I thought her boyfriend was—was I-don’t-know-exactly-what—but that I was trying to ignore him, to keep him on the other side of the line I had drawn, before he became something that I-did-know-what. Somehow she knew that I was trying to keep him away like an invasive plant to a carefully tended garden.

 

“What happens when people open their hearts?"

"They get better.”

― Haruki Murakami,  _Norwegian Wood_

 

❇

 

The itchy scarf around my neck—a multicolored wool monstrosity, gifted by my Grandmum—was the only thing capable of keeping the dungeons’ chill at bay.  It wasn’t the Potions classroom that set students’ teeth to chattering.  Professor Slughorn liked to sit in comfortable warmth and eat his crystallized pineapple while we sweated over our cauldrons.  It was the dampened corridors that were so unbearable. 

On gray mornings like today, my breath appeared in ghostly puffs, distorting my view of my own feet.  A new habit.  These days I passed through the dungeons with my head ducked, hurrying through the turns I had memorized.

_Left, left, down the staircase, then right…_

It was silly, but the scarf felt like some kind of talisman.Sweet old things like my Muggle grandmother Margery, and the gifts she painstakingly learned to owl, were still in the world.Not everyone was a monster.

_Only some.Like Michael Flint._

My saddle shoes clicked faster on the stone.He was a year above me, and it was my sole consolation—albeit a flimsy one—after what happened weeks ago.We never had classes together, and he would graduate in only a few months.Off to continue his father’s business of trade with the Magical Empires in the far east, no doubt.He’d probably marry one day.Some poor girl—who, given the Flints’ affluence, would of course be anything _but_ poor—would be subject to his fits of malice.

“Sorry,” I murmured to the Ravenclaw whose shoe I scuffed with mine. 

My fingers landed on the cool banister of the spiral staircase with relief.Almost there.The familiar inertia of my body winding further downward was oddly comforting. 

Like Michael, Walden Macnair was in his Seventh Year.I had managed to avoid him all but once.It was during the usual midday sea of students, when I was too small for his tall, skeletal frame to notice.Despite myself I had glanced down at those hands—onion-white, with knuckles like marbles—and somehow felt them around my throat again.

Now that I had nearly reached Potions, I allowed my eyes to lift, spotting the back of Peter Pettigrew’s head.Class was with Gryffindor today.Surely we would be paired together again.I quite liked Peter for his shyness, and the way that he made even myself feel outgoing and charismatic.His hair was sticking up in its two usual tufts, almost as if he had a pair of ears.

“I mean, _honestly,_ what did he expect?” came a familiar voice that made my shoulders seize.  She was ahead of me, approaching.  I could see her—both of them—and their identical fringe that parted in the middle like two wings, framing their pretty, mean faces.

Coraline Avery and Artemisia Ward.  After that night in the baths, and in the daylight of classrooms, their features had materialized into familiarity.  Maybe that was the most disturbing of all; that it had simply been too dark to recognize those who had known and sought me out.  Hunted.  Coraline and Artemisia had always been there, in my classes.  Always snickering at something.  Their school robes were finer, their dragonskin shoes shinier, little nods to their wealth dispersed into their uniforms: earrings made of unicorn horn here, an heirloom lapel pin there.

I ducked into an alcove and crouched beside its decorative suit of armor.Pretending to search for something in my bag, I turned my back from the flow of students.

“Pathetic,” Coraline—or maybe Artemisia—agreed.I knew they weren’t talking about me, but they might as well have been.My shoulders remained hunched, a pathetic shield, until the sound of their matching strides faded.

I would be late for Potions if I didn’t hurry.Still, I waited longer than I should have, until the suit of armor shifted uncomfortably at my close proximity.With a deep breath I plunged back into the bustling corridor like a fish in a stream. 

Again I felt grateful to have the day’s classes with Gryffindor.Each time my house shared a classroom with Slytherin, I sat rigid in my seat and lessons fell on deaf ears.My assigned seats were usually, by sheer awful coincidence, to be sat in front of Artemisia and Coraline.Nothing had happened yet—nothing that I noticed.But while I listened for whispers my marks dropped.

Some professors took note of my uneasiness.One evening in the greenhouses, I had hastily shoved my belongings back into my bag.It was nearly nightfall and I didn’t want to be out on the grounds, or in the corridors, by myself.

Professor Sprout had asked gently, “Are you well, Chloe?” 

I caught my reflection in the darkened window.My eyes were ringed with violet, my face sallow.“Exams,” I had said lightly, though they were months away.

At last I felt the warmth emanating through the open door of the Potions classroom.Loosening my scarf, I glanced up just in time to stop from colliding with Emily.Her nose was buried in her textbook; no doubt she was finishing last night’s homework.But when she spotted me her face flushed crimson.

Emily’s lip trembled as if she were about to say something, and I pushed past her.

As I searched for an empty seat, my heart sputtered.I _was_ late.In the dimness I saw Peter sitting beside Remus, leaving only two empty chairs side-by-side.Marlene smiled at me from across the room, where she sat with Lily Evans, but I was too panicked to return it.I couldn’t share a table with Emily for a double class—I _couldn’t._

Suddenly I spotted one remaining seat and my feet carried me across the room before my mind had caught up.I threw my things down, rattling the pewter cauldron and vials of herbs.The occupant beside me glanced up.My stomach dropped.

“Oh.”  I was already regathering my things.  “Sorry.”

But Sirius shrugged.“Don’t be sorry.It’s your seat.”After glancing around for Slughorn he said conspiratorially, “James is skiving off anyway.”

I felt the back of my neck prickle with everyone’s gaze.Sirius Black wasn’t _popular_ so much as _notorious._ He certainly wasn’t as universally liked, by both students and professors, as Lily Evans.Still, he had caught the eye of the majority of our year.And though he rarely put his wide selection of available girls—and boys—to use, watching him speak to them was a spectator sport.

And now, suddenly, I was playing the game.

“No, it’s fine, really, I don’t mind…”But I was glancing with dread to Emily—whose wide eyes were on us—and the empty chair beside her.

“What, do you not _want_ to work with me?” he said teasingly and, to my humiliation, loud enough for the room to hear. 

“N-no, I mean, I do.”

“Well then.”Sirius gently put his hand on the textbook I clutched and, after a pause, as if he were dealing with a wild animal, gently set it back on the table.

My cheeks flushed, the realization of which only made it worse.Guiltily I glanced over to Marlene, remembering her kindness, and the magnetic tug she seemed to have over him.It felt wrong to somehow be standing in between their magnetic poles, like the two of them would snap together and crush me.

But Marlene's white-blonde head was turned to Lily.They were laughing scandalously at something in their textbook, and I had the feeling that Marlene had just written something inappropriate.When I glanced back to Sirius, he tore his eyes away from her. 

Of course.He was trying to make her jealous. 

In that moment, I actually felt _sorry_ for him.

Nodding, I sank into the empty chair.“Sure.”

“There we are, love.Plus you're a genius at this stuff, right?I could use the help.”He gestured to the half-written parchment.It was last night’s assignment, but he didn’t seem too rushed to complete it.

I cleared my throat.“Well, first off, writing twice as large as normal won’t count towards the fifteen inches.”

He clicked his tongue at his enormous scrawl.“That obvious, eh?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” 

The crinkling in my eyes as I grinned was like using an old and unfamiliar muscle, and I toyed with the frayed edges of my textbook.The last time Sirius saw me, I had actually _fainted._ His first impression of me was as though he’d come across a stupid bird that had smacked into a window and injured itself.And wasn’t that exactly what I’d done, agreeing to meet with the Black Adders, knowing what they were like?

Suddenly my hands looked ridiculously small and fragile.I put them in my lap.“You could talk about Helena Vandergeissen,” I suggested.“She was the first to discover that howlet’s wing had medicinal properties.”

It was the most basic knowledge from the assigned reading, but I had the impression that Sirius hadn’t so much as cracked a book.

“That’s brilliant.Thanks, Claire.”

“Chloe,” I corrected with a slight sting.

“Chloe.Right.Sorry.”

He was sitting in a way completely not conducive to being at a desk: knee bent, foot resting on the edge of the table, arm dangling.He probably would have been lighting a cigarette in a very practiced manner, if he could have.Something about that irritated me.Why would you waste your parents’ money, and your professors’ time, and come to Hogwarts at _all?_

I tried to remember my feeling of distaste when he said, “Bet Peter’s angry he didn’t choose this seat.He’s more dreadful at Potions than I am.”

We glanced over our shoulders, but my eyes traveled past Peter and met Marlene’s piercing blue-gray stare.She was smiling mischievously.I looked away, awash with guilt.She was so _kind_ to me, and here I was, sitting with her boyfriend.Perhaps Sirius would have even left me alone in the corridor that night, had she not been there.It wasn’t fair of me.

I began gathering my things, glancing at the door.It was worth missing one class.Next time, I could be sure to get here early, to have a seat beside someone other than Sirius or Emily. 

The former raised an eyebrow and said, “Where are you going?You _do_ know he’ll be here any second.”

“I forgot something in my dormitory.”

“Don’t worry about it.Wouldn’t want your perfect attendance to be docked.” 

There was the pang of annoyance again, because what could Sirius Black know about worry?Had he already forgotten the state he and Marlene had found me in?Maybe he didn’t care. From what I had heard, he and James Potter had done their fair share of tormenting other students. 

I glanced at the hourglass on Professor Slughorn’s desk.He was late again.I would probably have to pass him in the corridor if I left, and he took missing class as a personal offense.

“Plus Hufflepuff is so far behind in points, I doubt you could spare those either.”  Sirius’s elbow nudged my arm in a friendly way, and I recoiled as if bitten.

“Merlin!Sorry,” he said, but there was hidden laughter in his voice.I looked ahead but could feel him studying me with that same irritating glimmer in his eyes, like he knew something about me that even I didn’t.“You don’t like me much, do you?”

At that moment the classroom door slammed shut and Slughorn’s booming voice ended the conversation.“Afternoon, students!”

“Good afternoon, Professor!” Sirius shouted jovially, forgetting everything, but I barely whispered it.The place on my arm where he had touched me was humming.

❇

That evening during dinner, I found myself in a familiar setting: the mostly vacant library, with the chatter of students echoing from the Great Hall, my stomach grumbling.  The chocolate frog I’d found in the depths of my bag had long since been devoured, hidden behind an upturned copy of _The Master Book of Herbalism._

True to pattern, I would stay here until the kitchens were nearly closing and the students had all left the Great Hall, before hurrying in and shoving whatever I could find into a napkin.Then, I would eat in the Hufflepuff common room.Or if I was particularly desperate, in my bed with the curtains drawn.Earlier that week, I had eaten lunch in the first floor girls’ lavatory, ignoring Moaning Myrtle’s sniffs that I would grow “quite fat” if I kept shoving chicken in my face.But I couldn’t help it.I was always ravenous by the time I finally allowed myself to eat.

On cue, my stomach growled.The enormous pendulum clock mounted on the wall said that dinner would be ending in twenty minutes, with curfew beginning in another forty.Though impossible, I _swore_ I could smell the roast potatoes.Another monstrous growl from my belly.

I slumped face-down on the table, dramatically, but with only Madame Pince there to witness I didn’t care.She seemed to tolerate me more than others.And this table, situated in plain view of her desk, felt safe.

Sometimes I thought I was being ridiculous, avoiding Emily like this.And Michael Flint.And Walden Macnair, and Artemisia Ward, and Coraline Avery.But I knew too well that they enjoyed their little game of whispering from the Slytherin table, casting long dark looks.They were quite proud of themselves.I had tried sitting with my back to them, but it felt like the mark on my side was burning beneath its bandages.Like they were breathing hot breath onto it.

_What if she tells somebody?_

_Look at her.She won’t._

“Well, look at you.”

I actually cried out in surprise and Marlene’s hand shot out to my shoulder.“Oh, I’m sorry!I didn’t mean to scare you!”

My chest felt full of nails but I managed something like a smile.“It’s alright.I fell asleep.”

She studied me knowingly but, as seemed to be her way, didn’t press further.The feeling of gratefulness that accompanied each of our interactions returned.It seemed that her every single act of kindness became something I could physically hold on to; like they were each a tiny, smooth stone.Soon I could use them to build a wall, separating me from everything that happened that night.

“Thought I’d find you in here.”She didn’t bother to keep her voice down, though Pince scowled from across the room.“You’ve missed every bloody meal this week.”

“I’ve just been so busy,” I said automatically, the same way I had told anyone else who had commented.As if I was incredulous at my own inability to make it to the Great Hall in time.My lie hadn’t seemed to work on Sprout or Pomfrey or my housemates, either.

“Well, I figured you could use some brain food, for that giant brain of yours.”She revealed a tied-up napkin in her hands.It looked like a little rucksack, bulging with something that smelled amazing.

“Oh, _bless you_ ,” I breathed, actually salivating. 

“C’mon.”

Soon we were seated on the floor in the Divination section, facing each other.Marlene was wearing her uniform trousers and sat with her knees drawn.I feverishly untied the napkin, shoving handfuls of pheasant and treacle fudge into my mouth at once.Marlene watched with an amused smirk.Too hungry to be embarrassed, I leaned back against the stacks, half-lidded as if she had given me lifeblood.My stocking-clad legs splayed before me.

“Too bad you can’t sit with us at meals,” she said.“It’s a stupid rule.”

I eyed her carefully and chose not to say anything.We were treading on dangerous territory.Luckily my mouth was still full pheasant.

Marlene took a deep breath.“Whatever it is that you’re avoiding—or whoever—I want you to know that, well, y’know—”She shrugged uneasily.“I’ve got your back.And clearly you don’t want to talk about it, and that’s fine, but…”

She reached over to grab my free wrist, giving it a little shake.Just the way she had done with my ankle in the Hospital Wing.Marlene was emotionally stunted enough to struggle with these conversations, but Gryffindor-brave enough to have them in the first place. 

I was looking at her chipped nail varnish when she said, “I think we should be friends.”

I stopped chewing, forcing myself to swallow the huge amount of food.

At my silence her head dropped into the crook of her arm.She said through embarrassed laughter, “C’mon, Chloe, don’t make me feel like an idiot.I’m just saying you seem nice.Y’know.Cool.And if you’re in a bind—”

“No, friends is good,” I said quickly.“Are good.Friends…are…good.”

Marlene’s infectious smile grew wider.“Good.”

She gave my wrist another little squeeze before releasing me with a sharp inhale.The kind of awkwardness that descends after a lovely moment—the kind that isn’t _really_ that awkward, because you're still living in that peace—settled over us.I silently broke off a piece of fudge and offered it. 

She accepted but suddenly remembered, talking with her mouth full, “Oh.Sirius wanted to tell you that he’s sorry for earlier.”

I froze and prayed that she couldn’t see the color rising to my cheeks; prayed that I was just imagining it.What was _wrong_ with me?He was condescending and irritating and, most of all, Marlene’s _boyfriend._ Everything I was feeling had extended from one moment, in the morning of the Hospital Wing, when I’d thought he was watching me.

But he’d been looking at her.

“Well, he didn’t say _sorry_ exactly, but it was about as close as he comes to it.He said he annoyed you during Potions, which we all know isn’t difficult for him to do.”

“Oh, right.Tell him it’s nothing.”She nodded, already forgetting the matter, but I took the plunge.“So you two are boyfriend and girlfriend, then.”

But the words didn’t sound casual at all.They sounded like I was struggling to speak a foreign language, and oh God, she could tell.Marlene could tell that I thought her boyfriend was—was _I-don’t-know-exactly-what—_ but that I was trying to ignore him, to keep him on the other side of the line I had drawn, before he became something that _I-did-know-what._ Somehow she knew that I was trying to keep him away like an invasive plant to a carefully tended garden.

But Marlene was laughing, and loudly.She laughed for so long that even I started tittering.From faraway, Madame Pince hissed, “ _SHHH!!”_

This time she did lower her voice, shooing the idea away with her hand.“Oh, Sirius is definitely _not_ my boyfriend.Did someone actually _say_ that?”

“No,” I said with a half-smile, “I just thought.” 

But the way that she laughed, and kept laughing until it was just a sound with no glimmer in her blue eyes, did nothing to convince me. 

Still, we nattered on, about Potions and today’s difficult lesson and the Slughorn mustache Marlene had apparently drawn on every illustration in her textbook.When it was time to return to the common room, we parted outside the library with self-conscious smiles.I watched her white-blonde hair swaying as she strolled off, arms swinging as if everything in the world was easy.And I decided that I would just have to keep Sirius as _I-don’t-know-what._ Because it seemed that even Marlene wasn’t quite sure herself.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a little slower, but some character relationships needed to be built, particularly Chloe-Marlene and Chloe-Sirius. Please let me know what you think! I'm very excited to continue this story and feedback is always appreciated.
> 
> CI by the lovely page thirteen. at The Dark Arts


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeing him like this felt like being on a boat in rough water. Everything had always seemed to roll off his shoulders. Relationships were flings. Bad grades were just a challenge to catch back up; he knew he was smart enough. Detentions didn’t matter because he did things like this—drinking in broad daylight on school grounds—and lived for it.

“Everyone in me is a bird.  
I am beating all my wings.”

― Anne Sexton 

❇

  
“It’s useless,” Marlene announced, slamming her textbook shut.  
  
“It’s _not_ , you just have to concentrate.”  
  
Our Herbology exam was the following afternoon. For the past two hours we had been sat by Marlene’s favorite tree, a blanket spread to protect our bare legs from the itchy grass. She was lying on her back, more than likely using her textbook to shield her eyes from the sun, than to actually read. The afternoon light was turning her hair phosphorescent as she narrowed her eyes.  
  
“All right. Just you remember this conversation when we get to DADA.”  
  
I groaned, recalling the pathetic spittle of light that emanated from my wand earlier. Dueling was certainly not my forte. Marlene, however, could hex or shield anyone with her eyes closed.  
  
She relocated to a cross-legged position. An entire fifteen seconds of uninterrupted studying passed before her book closed again. “Let’s go get ice cream! James showed me a way into the kitchens. He said the House Elves keep Florean Fortescue’s in there.”  
  
My answer came in the form of a question. “Why does the Venomous Tentacula subsist on Chizpurflies?”  
  
She opened her mouth but then her eyes glazed over. “Damn it, Chloe,” she conceded, flipping through the pages once more.  
  
“Twenty more minutes of studying and you can have all the ice cream you want.”  
  
“Yes, _Mum.”_  
  
Truthfully, I was beyond prepared for tomorrow’s exam. Most of today’s study session was spent keeping Marlene on track. While she huffed and sighed, moving from sprawled on her back, to sitting cross-legged, to lying on her belly (and repeating the process twice), I spent the afternoon leaning comfortably against the tree. Though my textbook was open on my drawn knees, my gaze rested on the lake.  
  
A lone owl was gliding low across the glassy water. It reminded me that I hadn’t written home at all over the last few months. Writing home meant discussing Emily; my mother had constantly been asking about her. So I simply hadn’t.  
  
I remembered the night before, when I had been too careless—I hadn’t timed everything perfectly. There was a moment, right before bedtime, when I was alone in the dormitory and Emily had passed through the doorway. When she saw me, she stopped. Without a word I turned my back and ran a brush through my hair.  
  
As I pulled back my covers Emily appeared, standing on the opposite side of the bed. “Semester’s almost over,” she said with careful lightness.  
  
I didn't even glance up at her, yanking the sheets back with too much force.  
  
“I’m excited for summer.” She leaned on a column of my four-poster and I felt my shoulders tense. “Remember the lake by my house? My brother and his mates have just built a tree swing, and now you can practically fly right into the water. Isn’t that exciting?”  
  
I stopped, fixing her with a stony gaze. “No.”  
  
She stared at me as if she were actually surprised, her slack jaw revealing those huge teeth. I hopped into my bed and, without a second glance, pulled the curtains tightly around me. Her presence remained on the other side of the partition. When she walked away, it was with a quiet huff of indignity.  
  
The owl had cleared the expanse of the lake and was heading for us. Surely it was from my home; my seventeenth birthday was next week. At the sound of wings Marlene looked up curiously. The owl landed before us, and dropped onto the grass. It bore the telltale postage stamps of my confused Muggle parents.  
  
Marlene snorted, “That is _adorable_. I’m surprised mine have never tried that.”  
  
The owl seemed content to rest with us, allowing Marlene to pet its glossy feathers as I unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a small box and an accompanying letter.  
  
“So, what’s new in the world of George and…” Marlene squinted, trying to recall my mother’s name. “Elaina? Anything interesting?”  
  
I opened the box first, revealing a small wristwatch with a leather band. It was simple, but certainly more than my parents could have spared. Marlene clicked her tongue and I knew we were thinking the same thing.  
  
“Are you going to tell them?” She smiled.  
  
“Never,” I returned it. The watch had frozen halfway between the ticking of seconds. Probably at the precise moment the owl had passed into Hogwarts grounds, at twelve seventeen this afternoon. “They’d be heartbroken.”  
  
I fastened the watch to my wrist, feeling guilty for some reason. Because Marelene was still looking I fought to keep my deep, steadying breath unnoticeable.  
  
The letter was written on the stationery my Mum had bought from the crafting shop in our town. She had a large family—two brothers and three sisters—and wrote to all them religiously. In many ways, my parents acted like Magical folks, foregoing the telephone for handwritten post. My father still refused to buy a television. The ancient radio in our den “suited them just fine,” he often said stubbornly.  
  
The stationery was folded into thirds. I lifted the top, revealing the first part of the letter.  
  
_May 7, 1976_  
  
_Dear Chloe,_  
  
_I hope this finds you all right. I still don’t understand why we can’t just use the postman, but that’s probably something you’ve learned about in school. Do be a dear and write back this time. We haven’t heard from you in a while, and there’s no telling whether these silly birds are actually doing as they’ve been trained._  
  
_Happy seventeenth birthday, darling. (Hopefully this reaches you by the eleventh. I really just don’t trust those birds. I wrote the date so you would know we were thinking of you and didn’t forget.) We hope that you like the watch that your father picked out._  
  
_Things have been quiet around here, as usual. Monty is shaping up to be a fine herder indeed. He’s just had his third birthday this past weekend._  
  
Here I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, smiling. My parents adopted a second herding dog several years after I began at Hogwarts. It was no secret that they hoped I would tire of being a witch, as if it were something I was just testing out. Each visit home for holidays meant a pamphlet for a local Muggle boarding school left on my bedside table. But by the time Third Year rolled around, they grudgingly accepted that I would remain at Hogwarts. Monty, a clumsy and energetic puppy, was adopted soon after. If my parents couldn’t raise me in their world, they needed a replacement.  
  
Marlene had lost interest so I unfolded the rest of the letter. A newspaper clipping fluttered onto the grass. It was face-down, and dread crept over me at the oddly cropped section of the _Daily Prophet_ on the reverse. My eyes closed. I wished I had remembered to cancel my subscription. Something bad must have happened—something that made them even more distrustful of magic.  
  
I let the clipping lay quivering on the grass, reading the final lines of the letter. The language was abrupt, her writing messier. It was as if my Mum had decided to include it at the last minute. I could just see her, pacing nervously in our kitchen, before letting her paranoia win.  
  
_Isn’t that story awful? Thought you should know. We still get your newspapers when you’re not here._  
  
_Love,_  
_Mum and Dad_  
  
The owl suddenly took to the air, the breeze from its wings nearly sending the clipping flying. I snatched it as Marlene said, “What’s that?”  
  
_“Muggle Rights Activist Attacked in Hyde Park,”_ I read the headline grimly. The article was short. I imagined it crammed between larger headlines in the Prophet’s usual clutter.  
  
Marlene’s face was stony as I continued, _“Ministry officials are investigating the attacks on a husband and wife that occurred in Hyde Park on Saturday evening. Therese and Reynard Durand, a Muggle and Wizard, respectively, were rushed to St. Mungo’s after sustaining life-threatening injuries. The couple was reportedly enjoying an evening stroll when three hooded figures Apparated and began to attack without warning. Mr. Durand claims they were unable to defend themselves when the attackers seized his wand. The assailants performed the Cruciatus Curse on both victims before they were sighted and fled. Ministry officials have confirmed that all Muggle witnesses have been Obliviated. The couple remains at St. Mungo’s in stable condition._  
  
_Mr. Durand received attention over the last year for his essays on bloodline equality. His public disproval of the “archaic tradition” of Pure-bloods marrying within their own families was heavily criticized by purist groups. Ministry officials have yet to comment on whether the attack is politically motivated.”_  
  
Marlene seemed to be staring through me. “And then there’s an address asking for information,” I said quietly.  
  
“Well of _course_ they’re politically motivated!” she growled. “The Cruciatus Curse on a marriage equality activist, in the middle of Hyde Park? He just published another collection of essays _two months_ ago, for Merlin’s sake. All these stodgy old Pure-bloods are infuriated! How can they say that they don’t _know?”_  
  
Truthfully, I had never even heard of Reynard Durand. But Marlene’s cheeks were flushed in fury. “That could have been you or me, Chloe.”  
  
I didn’t know what to say. What I should have said was that it already _was_ me. That I had already been attacked, for the same reasons, closer to where Marlene slept every night than anyone in Hyde Park. That the bandages had only come off a few weeks ago. That seeing the pearly pink scar tissue made my stomach turn. That she could be in danger, too.  
  
But what I did say was, “Let’s go and get that ice cream.”

 

❇

  
  
The weather turned sour for the afternoon of my birthday, a week later. I didn’t mind. The spring rain would help the plants, and soon I would be free to stroll along the edges of the forest, snipping leaves and berries and blossoms to press in my journal. Nobody knew that it was my birthday—even Emily had to be reminded every year—and I wasn’t particularly fond of celebrating.  
  
I hadn’t told Marlene, the day before our Herbology exam, as she sulked in the kitchens over a bowl of Florean Fortescue’s Cherry and Chocolate Frog. The House Elves had been mostly gone during the odd hours between lunch and dinner. A tiny Elf named Wispy had been more than happy to show us the secret ice cream. All three of us leaned against the stone countertops—the much-shorter Wispy resting her back on the cabinets—as we ate. I had tried to make polite conversation with Wispy while Marlene jabbed at the ice cream sullenly with her spoon.  
  
My birthday came on a Saturday, which was enough for me. The first round of exams were over and I could relax. DADA had gone terribly—at least in my opinion, though Marlene told me to “quit being such a Debbie Downer and accept the single A of my academic career.”  
  
As I climbed back down the stairs from the owlery, I went over everything in the letter I had just sent to my parents. It covered all of the bases to satiate my mother’s worry. Classes were nearly over. The weather was nice. Thank you for the lovely watch. Bijou was getting along with the other pets. I made a friend.  
  
Passing through a courtyard beneath Astronomy Tower, I heard the faint shattering of glass under the sound of the rain. The courtyard was small, and weeds grew between the cracks in the stone. A single bench was the only item saving it from the “completely pointless” category of castle areas, though I rarely saw students using it.  
  
Another pop—like a spell being performed—followed by more glass. Casting an umbrella charm, I stepped out from beneath the awning and around the corner, and saw Sirius Black.  
  
He was drenched to the bone, robes clinging to him. My breath caught. But then he whipped his wand overhead, and a yellow light shot out and burst one of the bottles lining a ledge on the wall. There was a shout of laughter and James appeared around the corner, a still-full bottle in hand.  
  
Suddenly Sirius noticed me and his arm dropped. Just as I jolted myself back to reality, hurrying around the corner, he called, “Wait! Claire—I mean, Chloe!”  
  
I faltered, considering pretending I never heard. But wouldn’t it be more suspicious to avoid him, and _only_ him? Slowly I turned and Sirius waved me over. With a steadying breath I crossed the courtyard.  
  
“What are you doing?” James said curiously.  
  
My eyes moved from him, to his wand, to their target practice. “What am _I_ doing?”  
  
“Fair enough. We’re studying for our Defense Against the Dark Arts exam.”  
  
“That was yesterday,” I said.  
  
James shrugged a little lop-sidedly with drink. “We’re just really dedicated students.”  
  
My eyes roved over to Sirius, who was being uncharacteristically quiet. He held his wand by both ends, rolling it between his fingers in thought. If the look on his face was a smile, then it was completely embittered. Raindrops coursed off the ends of his hair and into his eyes.  
  
James clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have to pardon our friend Sirius. He’s not having his best day.”  
  
“Oh,” I said quietly. I expected Sirius to show some kind of annoyance—I barely knew him, and maybe James shouldn’t be spreading that kind of information.  
  
But he opened his arms wide as if making a grand announcement. “ _I_ can’t go home this summer.”  
  
James hook his head, muttering something that sounded like “Complete bollocks.” As if he couldn’t stand to hear the story once more, he skulked away. The light from his wand smashed expertly through two bottles but he didn’t even react.  
  
I swallowed. Sirius and I were left alone.  
  
“What do you mean you can’t go home?” I tried not to watch the way the raindrops fell into his parted lips.  
  
“I am officially banished from the _Most Noble House of Black.”_ He said the words as if they soured on his tongue. “I am not allowed to return to my home. I am, as they say, _cut off.”_  
  
There was a sinking feeling in me. I thought of the story from the _Prophet_ , about the attacks on the Muggle rights activist. The Blacks were certainly one of the elitist pure-blooded families that Marlene had spoken of so venomously. How strange that she and Sirius were able to be friends.  
  
_Or whatever it is that they are._  
  
Sirius was pulling a letter from his pocket, which was so rain-soaked that it looked like cloth. He shook the letter indicatively. “The latest installment in the _Why-You-are-Such-an-Enormous-Disappointment_ saga. Because I finally told them just what they really are. Bigoted, elitist _monsters—”_ He slashed his wand so suddenly that I jumped at the explosion of glass. “And they disinherited me.”  
  
Though he gave a cavalier shrug, he was carefully folding the letter and returning it to his pocket. I wondered how long he would keep it. Rereading those awful words. Letting himself start to believe them.  
  
“I’d expect my bedroom has been set on fire by now,” he said.  
  
“You—told them you disagree?”  
  
Sirius looked at me like I had just slapped him. “Of _course_ I disagree!” When I could only stare in shock he barreled on, “What, did you think I was like them? Why does _everyone_ think—”  
  
“No, that’s not it!” I said quickly.  
  
Seeing him like this felt like being on a boat in rough water. Everything had always seemed to roll off his shoulders. Relationships were flings. Bad grades were just a challenge to catch back up; he knew he was smart enough. Detentions didn’t matter because he did things like this—drinking in broad daylight on school grounds—and lived for it.  
  
But something on his face looked different today. Desperate.  
  
“I just…” I thought of my parents, who in comparison to the Blacks were harmless, and how I could never stand up to them. To tell them that I chose this life, in this world, and that I wasn’t made for theirs. “I could never be so brave.”  
  
I said it and the raw honesty sent color to my cheeks. Sirius went very still. He watched me for a long time until I had to look away. Behind us, James’s spell missed a bottle spectacularly, and he cried out in dramatic dismay.  
  
“Thanks,” Sirius murmured, wiping the water from his face, and I knew that I couldn’t keep talking with him. Not if I meant to keep my unspoken promise to Marlene—my _friend_. I couldn’t stay here with him, rain-soaked, and keep the cords wrenched tightly around my thoughts. My nod was to my feet.  
  
“So, how are _you?”_ He broke the silence, grinning again. The moment was already over. “Anything major going on in your life?”  
  
“It’s my birthday,” I said as if just realizing it.  
  
“Oh.” Sirius blinked with interest, rising to his full height. He jogged off towards James, reaching into an alcove of the courtyard and pulling out an unopened bottle. James watched with mild interest as Sirius tossed the bottle, caught it, and passed it to me.  
  
“Well. Happy birthday, Chloe.”  
  
It was some cheap beer I had never heard of, and I had no desire to drink it. But it still made me feel like a bird was trapped in my belly. I took the bottle, careful not to brush my fingers with his. “Oh. Thank you.”  
  
Sirius smirked, turning back to the wall. “Looks like James is winning. Reckon I’d better catch up.”  
  
I nodded, ducking my head. I didn’t even say goodbye, or look at James, because I needed to disappear. Sirius might have watched as I turned and rushed away; I wasn't sure. My feet carried me back under the archway, through the open doorway, into the castle, and up a short staircase. But I paused at a lone window, looking through the glass like a ghost, past the rain. The courtyard was barely visible from this angle. With my fingertips against the glass I watched Sirius as he stepped backwards into view, gauging his target. Once more his wand whipped through the air like a fencing pole. I could hear his victorious shout as the spell hit its mark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: And so begins the slowest of slow burns. Truthfully I have a lot more written, but I wanted to keep this chapter short to avoid information overload--with the attack on the Muggle rights activist, Chloe and Marlene having become friends, skipping ahead to the end of the term, and Sirius finding out he's been disowned. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, readers! 
> 
> Chapter image by page thirteen. at TDA
> 
> ♥


	6. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regulus’s head hung in utter mortification and, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to hex Sirius. The former’s porcelain cheeks were pock-marked with acne, his nose too big for his face, as he glanced at me from beneath his eyelashes. 
> 
> “Hello,” I tried to smile.
> 
> Walburga’s hand flew to the boy’s chest, pulling him against her as if I were an unclean rodent in their path. “That’s enough from you,” she snapped, and I wasn’t sure if she meant Sirius or myself.

 “They're a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.” 

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_

❇

The chatter of students swelled to an indistinguishable hum as we walked amongst the trees.  Snippets of conversation leapt out: warm visits to the seaside, not cracking a single book all summer, and who would eat the most banoffee pie.  It all sounded nice enough.

I glanced at Bijou for the hundredth time.  She was as restless as the day I first took her home, small enough to fit in one hand.  Today her curious head poked from my shoulder-bag.  If she got away I would _never_ find her here, in the woods outside of Hogsmeade Station.  My dragging trunk caught on a stone, jostling the cat, and I covered her head protectively.

The crowd was moving slowly but a young girl sprinted past, cartwheeling in the dirt, whipping her hair to laugh with her friends.Our gazes met and skittered away and I felt myself smiling despite myself.

Perhaps I was sulking.  But returning to my home for the summer holiday wasn’t so joyful.  It meant no magic.  It meant tending a garden of vegetables and herbs with no magical properties.  It meant singing along, off-key, to quiet hymns in dusty churches; shearing sheep and churning butter and making smalltalk with my father about the market price of wool.  Even receiving owls made my Mum nervous.

In the warm evenings I could read outside, on the lone hill of our property, from the books I bought in Hogsmeade about dragons and magical fungi.  But they always felt like fiction.  Like I had made up their world in my head.  As if Hogwarts didn’t actually exist, and neither did the feeling of magic as it coursed, like an electrical current, through my wand.  Neither did quiet evenings in the greenhouse, or broomsticks, or Marlene.

I had no idea where she was right now.  The past week was spent distancing myself, as if preparing for a fast.  Most evenings I spent in the Hufflepuff common room, rather than seeking her out on the castle grounds, drinking in the warm air with Lily Evans.  I had evaded her questions about the train ride home.  Somehow, it felt easier to find a lone compartment, or to share one with quiet strangers, than face my last hours with her. 

In my trunk her mailing address was scrawled on a scrap of parchment, pressed between the pages of a book.I could write to her, at least.Maybe.

Several fat raindrops splattered onto the path.  A collective groan: _so much for nice weather_.  Springtime rain always smelled metallic to me, and I breathed in the curious scent.  When we reached Hogsmeade Station at last the train, billowing steam, made my heart sink.  I glanced down once more to Bijou before stepping aboard.

Students raced for the best seating with their friends, as frantic as a beehive.Bijou and I pushed our way through the chaos.As we passed from car to car the crowds grew sparser; usually the train’s end held an empty compartment or two.My newest book, lent by Professor Sprout, was burning a hole in my robe.A quiet ride and the autobiography of Britain’s first female herbologist awaited. 

I reached for the doorknob to the next car, but a glance through the window stopped me stone-still.

Michael Flint.His back was to me, but I would recognize the razor-sharp precision of his haircut anywhere.As if he’d known I was coming, he fixed me with a cold glance over his shoulder.The lips of Coraline Avery and Artemisia Ward were parted mid-sentence, curling into wicked smiles.Their triad stood like centurions.They were so terribly _proud_ of what they’d done.

In the glass I saw my own reflection, moon eyed.I took a staggering step backwards, and then another, until I turned and ran—right into Peter Pettigrew.

Miraculously, he managed not to drop the pile of sweets in his arms.“Oh!Hi, Chloe.Cauldron Cake?”

Bijou hissed loudly, which was unlike her, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.I could hardly unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.“No, thank you.” 

A glance revealed that the Slytherins had disappeared.Somehow, that was more unsettling.

“I’m a bit lost, actually,” Peter was saying.“James sent me to find sweets, and, well, the compartments all look the same…”

At that moment a door slid open and Remus Lupin’s head poked out.  “Peter!  How could you _possibly_ have gotten lost?”  He spotted me and smiled politely. “Hello.”

“Who’s that?” came Marlene’s voice.  “Better not be someone after my Licorice Wands, I told Peter to buy her out— _Chloe!”_ She nearly elbowed Remus to wave me over.  “Get in here!”

The compartment looked like a clown car.  Peter struggled back to his window seat, tripping over the tangle of legs.  Overhead, the storage area bulged with suitcases and two owl cages.  Marlene was practically sitting on Lily Evans, and across from them James struggled not to do the same to Peter.  Mary MacDonald, a Gryffindor who had always seemed friendly, was pancaked between the wall and Remus.  Her frizzy black hair was tied back with a bandana.

“We’re having a bit of trouble with the enlargement charms,” she explained as I stood in the threshold.

“Reckon we never have to worry about them, do we?” James winked and Mary snorted with laughter.  (Lily audibly scoffed, “Oh, _please.”)_

A shadow moved beside me and I jumped—but it was Sirius who was standing so close.An expensive dragonskin jacket adorned him. He was leaning in the doorway as if constantly waiting for someone to take his photograph. 

He eyed the tangle of limbs appreciatively.“Well _this_ is impressive.”

“Even more than the Hogsmeade Carriage Debacle of ’74?” James asked.

“I would say so.”Remus nodded thoughtfully.

“More space per person,” agreed Peter.

“Oh my _God_ , just give me the bloody Licorice Wands!” Marlene bellowed.Looking frightened, Peter released the pile of sweets and they descended like vultures.

Mouth full, Marlene quirked an eyebrow at Sirius.“Gonna stand there posing all day, James Dean?”

He rolled his eyes but came to sit beside her and, after a pause, draped her legs across his lap.  She didn’t even seem to notice, already tearing in to her next pack of Licorice Wands, but I felt my chest tighten.

“Have a seat,” Lily said.“If you can find one.”

“I have a lap available,” offered James.

My cheeks burned but I said, looking squarely at Marlene, “It’s alright, I was going to have a kip.Plus Bijou isn’t very friendly.”It wasn’t entirely a lie, as she didn’t seem to like Peter.“Find me on the platform so we can say goodbye?”

Marlene gave an upside-down little smile.“Aw, don’t say it like that!You’re breaking my heart.Are you sure you won’t stay?”

She was oblivious as Sirius rested his hands on her shins, casting a downward smile.I remembered that afternoon in the courtyard; the hammer of the rain and the way it fell into his parted lips.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Turning the opposite direction of the Black Adders, I walked briskly.I heard Marlene murmur defensively, “Oh, come off it, she’s just _shy.”_ Chatter and laughter from their compartment, and others’, followed in my wake. 

Near the front of the train was an unoccupied compartment—an unpopular spot near the Professors’ car.My still-shaking hands placed my luggage overhead and the train slowly rolled into motion.Out the rain-pattered window, Hogsmeade Station gave way to forest, and finally the strange domelike hills of the Scottish highlands.I only halfway watched the scene while Bijou kneaded my lap.The book remained in my robe, unopened.I never slept.

❇

While the train pulled into Platform 9¾ I stood, still and straight as a tree, at the exit.  The moment the train stopped—the second I heard the _click_ of the door magically unlocking—I threw it open and rushed into the throngs, trunk dragging.  Hopefully the Black Adders were far behind.  I imagined they would rise languidly from their seats, slowly collecting their designer luggage, like their every move was heralded.

My parents weren’t in the first row.I was relieved and pushed through the crowd like breaking into water.Amid the bodies, I felt sheltered.Walking more slowly I searched for them: my father, tall and thin, with his trademark derby cap, and my mother’s rosy cheeks and flyaway bun.She was small like me and barely came to his shoulder.They would look nervous, as always.Uncomfortable to be around so many strange folks.

A woman, standing a short distance from the others, caught my attention like a flickering lightbulb.Something about her reminded me of a bird of prey.She was beautiful, and must have been somebody’s mother or aunt, but nothing about her was maternal.Her high-collared emerald green dress robes were of the finest silk, and left only her bone-white hands exposed, clasped tightly before her. 

She must have felt my stare.Suddenly her inky eyes were on me, as if I were a beetle, pinned inside a glass case.It felt like she was pulling something from inside of me until it wasn’t there anymore.

“Chloe, over here.”

My parents.  I had walked close enough to touch them and hadn’t even realized.  Blinking myself back to reality, I forced a smile. 

“Mum.”I pressed a kiss to her cheek.“It’s good to see you.”

My Dad smiled down at me, uncertain whether to hug me as always, and I closed the space between us.Certainly they were happy to see their daughter.But beneath the rosy cheeks and shining eyes, I knew they were uneasy. 

“Hi, Dad.Have you been waiting long?”

“Not at all!” he said, and I knew he would have said it even if they’d been there all week.He took my suitcase for me.“Good trip?”

“I read a lot,” I lied.

“Our smart girl,” my mother beamed, for a moment forgetting where she was, and the kind of people that surrounded her. She bent to scratch Bijou under her chin, where she was replaced in the satchel.“And hello to you, little one.Where’s Emily?”

I fought to keep my voice light.“Off with some friends, I’m sure.I said goodbye to her already.”

My Mum nodded.“Well, shall we go then?”

I knew I had been lying, when I had told Marlene I would find her and say goodbye.So I nodded, releasing a breath.“Yeah, let’s go.”

“Chloe!”

Sirius’s voice came from just over my shoulder, where I felt a persistent tap of his finger.My parents’ expressions were unreadable as they took him in: a tall, handsome young Wizard, who clearly came from money, touching their daughter.

I turned to face not only Sirius, but the woman.My breath caught as realization materialized: she was his _mother._ Now, as she stood at a distance behind him, I noticed their same olive skin and dark hair.But it was their eyes—hers black and fathomless, his grey and glimmering—that set them apart. 

Her hand was clamped on the shoulder of a young boy.He was standing so timidly that he all but blended into her robes.Sirius’s brother, surely.

“Hi,” I finally managed.  I stood like a barricade between him and my parents, whose nervous looks I could feel burning into the back of my skull.

James, Remus and Peter stood behind Sirius, in a half-circle.And Marlene, I realized with a skipped beat.Her white-blonde hair seemed be standing on end, as if an electrical current were pulsing through her.They all glowered at Mrs. Black. 

_She banished her own son._

“I want you to meet my _dear_ mother,” Sirius said to me.James clenched his fists at his side, shifting his weight.What, was he going to _punch_ the woman?

Mrs. Black ignored him.“Regulus, say goodbye to your…”

She couldn’t even say the word “brother.”

“That’s right,” Sirius was speaking in a theatrical tone, to me, to everyone.“Old Walburga here hasn’t come to collect _me_.As you’ll recall, I’m not allowed to return to my home this year.But Regulus, the _ideal heir_ to the Black family fortune—now, he’s a different story.”

Regulus’s head hung in utter mortification and, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to hex Sirius.The former’s porcelain cheeks were pock-marked with acne, his nose too big for his face, as he cast me a low glance. 

“Hello,” I tried to smile.

Walburga’s hand flew to the boy’s chest, pulling him against her as if I were an unclean rodent in their path.“That’s enough from you,” she snapped, and I wasn’t sure if she meant Sirius or myself.

But the former, unable to admit defeat, threw an arm around me so violently that I nearly tripped.A gasp escaped that I prayed it was unheard.Sirius pulled me, stumbling, into his side and pinned me there.He smelled like clove cigarettes and pine.

“Chloe here is a Muggle-born,” he said proudly.He looked down at me like my father looked at our dog, Monty, when he won the herding prize.“Isn’t that right?” 

My throat closed in anger, shame, fear—to be ousted in front of another elitist Pure-blood.But I didn’t have to respond, because Walburga spat, “Well that much is perfectly obvious!” 

The scar tissue along my belly seemed to constrict like a snake.Her black eyes raked over me in disgust, landing on the Muggle wristwatch with a sneer.I felt it again, the sensation of being sapped of whatever kept me standing.

Sirius discarded me unceremoniously as Walburga said, “Is this supposed to impress me?Do you think you’ve somehow _won_ here?You can keep your filthy little playthings!As far as I’m concerned, _you’re dead to us!”_

Her voice ended in a shriek, and it was as if the whole world stilled.The crowd’s voices fell to a hush. Students dropped their summer holiday smiles.Parents tugged their curious children away, whispering.And Sirius, with his feet planted in defiance, looked for one moment—one, nearly imperceptible moment—as if he might cry.

And then the silent vacuum swelled once more, the passers-by continued on their way, the chatter returned, and the world righted itself.Back to its ugly, awful self.I felt sick.Regulus and Mrs. Black turned on the spot, pushing angrily through the crowds.

Sirius remained staring, the ghost of that expression still on his face, until he deftly molded a new one around it.He spun on one foot, shrugging widely to his friends.“What do you reckon?Should I start planning the next family barbecue?”

Remus, Peter and Marlene could barely conceal their grim looks under attempted smiles.But James was ready with the assist.

“Absolutely.I’d say you two will take the mother-son bakeoff.”He clapped Sirius on the back.But I saw the dark look he cast over his shoulder.

Something tugged at the corner of my vision: Peter.He was giving me the most pitying look I could imagine.Coming from him, who—for all intents and purposes—was the tagalong of their little group, it was all the more crushing.I felt like a piece of parchment somebody had crumpled up.

“Chloe?” came my mother’s eggshell voice.My eyes fluttered shut.  Of _course_ fate had allowed them to be present for this.   With her tiny fist pressed to her mouth, she looked like a child who needed consoling.

“It’s alright,” I lied.

And I waited for Sirius to prove that it was.For some kind of an apology; a second glance; _anything_.But they were all muttering together, attempting smiles, changing subjects.Remus’s voice drifted over, “You should come stay at mine.”I waited, stupid and forgotten, until I couldn’t anymore. 

It looked as if the color was only now returning to my parents’ cheeks.They each took my arm, like I were an athlete who had lost the medal, and needed to be walked from the field.

“It’s alright,” I said again.“Let’s go home.”And in that moment, a summer without magic sounded exactly right.No Michael Flint, no Walburga Black, no Sirius.But then something was crashing into me from behind, stopping me—

It was Marlene, grabbing me in a fierce hug.She smelled like licorice wands.I limply returned her embrace and she said in my ear, “I’m _so_ sorry, Chloe.”A peck was pressed to my cheek and she held me at arm’s length, studying me closely.Her mouth pressed into a sad smile. 

“Write to me, okay?”

And then she was gone.

 

❇

 

The sun beat down mercilessly, where I kneeled in the soil.It was a record summer.Sweat beaded on the back of my exposed neck, and I pressed a dirty cloth to the skin, careful not to remove the sunscreen.My wide-brimmed hat was too heavy to wear, too hot.It lay discarded several feet away.But the strawberries were perfect, fat, ruby-red jewels.They had to be picked in time for tomorrow’s farmers’ market.

My basket was already brimming with berries.  It seemed like there were still thousands to go.  I dragged myself to my feet, wishing I could Levitate the basket to the shady spot, instead of hauling it.  I was seventeen, and it was legal.  But my mother was just across the field and would surely notice.

“Mum!” I called, struggling with the weight.  She raised her head from tending the zucchini.  I mimed drinking a glass of water and staggered to place the basket with the others.

Several small birds had gathered eagerly around the pile.I shooed them with my hands.They flew away in a loop, immediately settling back in their places.Cheeky things.With a quick glance over my shoulder, I pulled my wand from the waistband of my skirt.

_“Protego,”_ I murmured, and a faint light vanished around the baskets.I fixed the birds with a smug look before heading into the cool dimness of our home. 

The house was quiet.Dad was in town at my aunt and uncle’s house—Emily’s house.He was helping them build a raised flowerbed.They lived in a nice house, with neighbors on either side, and a television, and a paved driveway.Dad had offered me a day off, if I wanted to tag along and spend time with Emily.By now her name only elicited a dull nothingness; a distinct _lack_ of emotion, as if she registered as a blank parchment in my mind.

“No, that’s okay,” I had said easily over my plate of fried eggs.“I know Mum needs help with the strawberries.”

Now discarding my shoes at the door, I thought, _If he was suspicious, he didn’t show it._

The stone floor of the entryway was cool on the soles of my feet.I stilled, letting my body temperature lower.The calendar beside me bore an unremarkable oil painting—a field of wildflowers, some mountains—at which I had glanced countless times.It was turned to August.

Less than one month until I was back at school.

It was the same as last summer, and the summer before that: nearly impossible to believe that Hogwarts existed.  That somewhere, painted portraits spoke, and Elves prepared delicious feasts, and staircases swung temperamentally, and professors turned into cats.  That there was a whole other world I inhabited, a whole different version of myself.

I turned on the faucet and let the water run.  The pipes were old, like the rest of the house, and the first half-glass always tasted metallic.  I leaned against the counter and drank heartily.  Then I filled another glass, and drank that.  A jar of jam was left open on the cutting board.I stuck a finger inside to taste the sugary fruit.Boysenberry.Made from last year’s harvest.

In the stillness of the kitchen, the calendar seemed to be physically looming.  In just over three weeks, I needed to have my entire summer coursework finished for my Herbology apprenticeship.  I had, in the first weeks of holiday, done the research in my bedroom after my parents fell asleep.  But as the temperature climbed, and the farm work grew more demanding, the project had taken a back seat. 

Part of me wondered if it was on purpose.  One afternoon, my Mum had caught me experimenting with Screechsnap clippings (the entire crux of my project) brought from the Hogwarts greenhouse.  The leaves constantly swayed as if in a breeze; it was impossible to hide as anything but a magical plant.  Over the next weeks there was a sudden rise in the tasks I needed to complete.  Floor scrubbing, weed pulling, errand running, market booth tending.

I reached for the jam once more, freezing halfway.  The _Screechsnap!_   I hadn’t given it any water over the last few days. 

Cursing under my breath, I sprinted up the stairs to my room.  Without the plant to study, there was no way I could finish my summer coursework.

My room was the same as when I was little.The same small bed was pushed against the wall, my Grandmum’s quilt spread over the mattress.A chair by the window doubled as a spot to read or, if I pulled it to my heirloom desk, a comfortable place to study.The desk itself was my great-grandmother’s, on my father’s side.It was old, and smelled it, in a pleasant way.The drawers had keyholes but my Mum had never given me the key, so they remained unlocked.

I pulled the top left drawer open and gingerly extracted the Screechsnap.They thrived in the dark, which was why it had lived in the drawer—unfortunately, it was also why I had forgotten it.Professor Sprout had given me two tissue-thin papers, enchanted to retain moisture.The Screechsnap was kept between them.Carefully I lifted the stem with two fingers… 

The faintest twitch of a leaf returned my heartbeat in whooshing relief.It was salvageable.

With a surgeon’s precision, I used the eye-dropper to release two beads of fresh water on the base of the stem.  It would need more, in a few hours, but I didn’t want to oversaturate it.  Relieved, I gently replaced it in the drawer.

I paused when I spotted the opened envelopes, in the drawer next to the Screechsnap.  There were three of them, all from Marlene.  They were short, and detailed her summertime adventures with Lily or her four siblings.  She was the only witch, and spent her holidays reveling in the Muggle activities she’d missed at school.  Her letters mentioned several new films she’d gone to see at the cinema, and new music records she’d bought.  I hadn’t heard of any of films, or the records.

She never asked why I didn’t write back.In fact, she was the _only_ schoolmate aware that the events at Platform 9¾ had left me shaken.For the first month of summer, in the spare moments I had alone (riding in the back of my father’s truck, looking for escaped sheep; walking into town for groceries) I had hoped for a letter from Sirius.I wanted some kind of apology. 

Of course, it never came.It was foolish of me to wait for it.

I was grateful, as always, for Marlene’s kindness.But each letter sent a fresh wave of shame, like the pins-and-needles of a limb falling asleep, through my whole body.Because as I studied her messy script, written in ballpoint pen, I remembered that Sirius could have chosen her to single out.Marlene was a Muggle-born, too.And she actually _was_ his friend, and somebody he was infatuated with.Somebody who would drive his mother insane.But he had wanted to spare Marlene the pain and humiliation.

He hadn’t minded humiliating me.

“There you are!”

I jumped at my mother’s voice, a hand flying to my chest.She stood in the doorway, smiling, but I saw her eye the open drawer.“We’ve got to hurry up with those strawberries, dear,” she said.“We still have to clean them, and then there’s the zucchini and the eggs…”

_So many things to do, here and now.No time for whatever is in that drawer._

“Sorry,” I said.“I’ll be right down.”

But she stood in the doorway, smiling expectantly, so I closed the drawer and followed after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter image by amoretti at TDA.


	7. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These thoughts culminated in the usual irritation as I stole another glance at Sirius. He was taking a long drag on the cigarette. To my surprise, the feelings of frustration were overcome by another: I’d never had the faintest desire to smoke a cigarette in my life, but I suddenly wanted to take it from his lips and put it to my own.

“I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.” 

― Allen Ginsberg

 

❇

 The Great Hall looked like a royal court for the Sorting Ceremony.House banners billowed as if in a breeze; professors sat at the head table like nobility.I half expected a procession of trumpets and court jesters.It was silly and dull to most older students, as we impatiently awaited the First-Years and, more importantly, the feast.But I liked it.It reminded me of my first time stepping inside Hogwarts, scrawny and pigtailed, clinging to Emily’s arm. 

My parents were sad to see me board the Hogwarts Express, earlier today.It was my seventh and final time, and as I waved from the window, I wished their anxieties hadn’t clouded such an important moment.They stood watching like they’d never see me again. 

But by the time the train pulled to a stop at Hogsmeade Station, and my Muggle watch froze mid-tic, the fog of guilt lifted.There was a change in the air; a distinct autumnal snap. I stepped off the Hogwarts Express with my chin lifted a degree higher than usual. 

Chatter ricocheted off the Great Hall’s vaulted ceiling.The Gryffindor table was filling with students, but Marlene had not yet arrived.I smiled at Quill Hopkins, a Sixth-Year seated beside me, and we murmured politely about our summers.Emily’s long looks, cast from down the table, had become surprisingly easy to ignore.

A napkin folded into a paper airplane suddenly landed before me.My breath hitched.For a moment I was back in that night last year, watching as Emily unfolded the note from Michael—the note that had sparked everything.Everything from the attack to my scar to my friendship with Marlene. 

But Michael was graduated, now.Gone.Things were different.

A smile lit up my face: Marlene was waving ecstatically from the Gryffindor table.Her hair had somehow grown even more white-blonde in the sun.Seeing her sent a little skittering in my heart, like a stone skipping over water, and I suddenly felt so, _so_ incredibly stupid for avoiding her. 

Across from her James, Sirius, Peter and Remus lined the bench.They were talking animatedly to anyone and everyone.I recognized the back of Sirius’s head.His black hair had grown even longer and more and unruly over the months.He must have noticed Marlene’s waving; he turned and offered me a little smile over his shoulder. 

The corner of my mouth twitched; I quickly turned to the note.

_YOU JERK, I MISSED YOU, COME FIND US AT THE LAKE TONIGHT OR I SWEAR TO GOD_

Biting my lip to keep from smiling too hard, and fully conscious of Emily’s shocked stare, I wrote, _I will.I promise._

And this time, I meant it. 

❇

The air had cooled considerably as I walked to the Black Lake.The low sun was turning the bellies of fat clouds orange.In the far distance the hills of the Scottish highlands, bare and round, cast behemoth shadows.It was the strange time—unique to the mountains—when it was both day and night, depending on where you were standing. 

I had missed this.Our family farm was worthy of a generic oil painting, maybe.But it was the wild hills and untamed forests that really tugged at something inside of me.

Students clustered in groups around the lake.It was an unspoken beginning-of-term tradition to gather along the glassy water, some of them testing camouflaging charms on cheap alcohol.Filch always came skulking around.But unless you were particularly ungifted with charms, nobody seemed to ever get caught.

I had almost completely rounded the lake before I heard Marlene’s distinctive laugh.A clump of students wearing their day clothes gathered around a fallen tree.I caught a flash of long, fire-red hair.Lily Evans.Which meant James Potter, which meant Sirius Black.I swallowed.Spending time with Marlene, while trying to avoid the boy glued to her side, was proving difficult.

“Chloe!” Marlene called.

I stumbled down the hill where the dirt met with stony beach.Marlene met me halfway.She was wearing some sort of enormous sack meant to be a dress and combat boots—black, of course, like the smokey pencil around her eyes.

“I missed you,” she said, crushing me in a hug.

Her physical affection, and the ease with which she gifted it, still caught me off guard.But I returned the embrace after a stunned moment.“Missed you too.”

She smiled her wide smile and called out to the others, “Look who I found!”

A slew of Gryffindors greeted me, some enthusiastically, others with a quiet nod.Among the mumblings came Peter’s usual “Hi, Chloe,” as he blushed down at his shoes.Remus lifted his chin with a polite smile. 

Mary Macdonald retrieved the bottle behind her crossed ankles and winked, “Evening.”

I nodded at James’s badge.“Head Boy.Erm, impressive.”

He threw his hands in the air.“Why is everyone so bloody incredulous?”

“Probably because _you_ brought the bottle.”Lily hugged her chest to cover her own badge but cast me a friendly smile.

Marlene slung an arm around my shoulders.As she guided me away from the group I mentally congratulated myself for not so much as glancing Sirius’s way.Still, his presence tugged at the corner of my vision like a blot of ink.I knew he was sitting next to James on the fallen tree.

Alcohol laced Marlene’s breath.“We got here ages ago.Where were you?”

“Well…” I searched for the answer that would make me seem the least like a complete loser.

She clicked her tongue.“Chloe!The greenhouses, already?It’s not even the first day of term yet!”

“I could say the same to you, _lush_.You smell like Filch at Christmas.” 

“Oi!”She pulled me into a near-headlock.“I’m just getting it out of my system.This year I’ll have top marks, even better than yours.” 

I nodded in a way that said, _Doubt it._

A scandalized look came over her.Holding me at arm’s length, she scoffed, “You’re so _brown_ , you little minx!What, were you at the seaside all summer without us?”

I wiped at my face as if it would remove the new freckles.“Nothing half as glamorous.I was put to work all summer on the farm.I actually helped birth a _calf.”_

Marlene made a face but then her voice dropped.“Hey, how’s things with your Mum?Alright?”

It felt like a chord in my chest was plucked.“She’s… still adjusting, somehow.Sorry I was so quiet this summer, I just, well, you know.”

She nodded thoughtfully.“Next year, eh?You’ve got to come round to mine.God, I was so bored.I had to resort to hanging out with _Sirius.”_

I plastered on a smile, imagining the two of them lazing in the heat, or doubled over with their contagious laughter.“I promise, I was more bored.” 

“Your Mum shouldn’t even be able to stop you, technically.You _are_ a legal adult.”

“In _our_ world.Not hers.Try explaining to a God-fearing Muggle that not only do we fly on broomsticks and speak in secret languages, but we can start legally misbehaving a year earlier.”

“She’ll come ‘round,” said Marlene resolutely. 

I pressed my mouth into a smile.Headstrong, determined Marlene couldn’t even imagine.Maybe she was the black sheep of her family, but it was in a loving way.She was a novelty to them. _Oh, our little Marlene, always off at her weird school learning weird things._  

“Definitely,” I said.The watch my Mum gifted me seemed to constrict around my wrist.

Marlene steered us back to the group.Pretending to rub my chin on my shoulder, I finally allowed myself a glance at Sirius.He was starting the fire.A cigarette—hopefully bewitched to leave no telltale scent—dangled from his lips.

Sirius glanced up and I tore my eyes away.

“Oi, got any of those to spare?” James said.

“…the bloody _Head Boy_ …”Lily rubbed her temples.“We _do_ have to meet with McGonagall in one hour, you know.”

“Not to worry, love, not to worry.” 

James had already fished a cigarette from Sirius’s dragonskin jacket, which was oh-so-carefully draped over the tree trunk.He tossed another to Remus and a hesitant Peter.They were idiots.Surely Filch would be here any minute, but they didn't seem to care.The concept was so unnervingly strange to me. 

I had slaved for six years—soon to be seven—to earn top marks, and stay out of trouble, and keep my head down.Then Marlene came into the picture with these friends of hers. It seemed that Lily and I—and Mary Macdonald, for all I knew—were being pulled into their little world, where detentions didn’t matter and memories made were more important than their consequences.

These thoughts culminated in the usual irritation as I stole another glance at Sirius.He was taking a long drag on the cigarette.To my surprise, the feelings of frustration were overcome by another: I’d never had the faintest desire to smoke a cigarette in my life, but I suddenly wanted to take it from his lips and put it to my own.

The fire burst to life.Mary’s squeal of delight echoed over the lake and Sirius sheathed his wand, looking proud of himself.Embers lifted into the breeze and vanished into the purple sky.We shared an oddly silent moment before it was abruptly ended.

“We’ve got a regular Phoenix Scout over here!” James nudged Sirius with his foot, who swatted him away.

Mary and Remus were sitting rather close, hoarding the bottle, and as Marlene had taken to standing over Sirius to critique his kindling, I turned to the remaining space beside Peter.Getting between Lily and James—while her grudging look slowly turned into stolen glances—felt like treason. 

“Good summer?” I asked Peter.

He ruffled his hair.“I reckon, yeah.You?”

“Glad to be back.”

“Me too.”

That exhausted our topics of conversation; I stared into the fire instead.Marlene was using her wand to enlarge the blaze to her liking, while Sirius watched with annoyance and the usual admiration.Across the lake, other fires had sprung up, flickering orange like cat’s eyes.

“Oi, Chloe,” called Marlene.“Stay a while.Ditch the uniform.”

I glanced down self-consciously while the others tittered.Professor Sprout probably wouldn’t have minded, had I arrived out of uniform, but it felt unnatural.Somehow disrespectful.I had thrown my robes on on at the last minute, over my dress.

“Well, since you asked so very nicely…” I mumbled and shrugged the fabric away.Baring my shoulders on school grounds felt like walking into a church naked.And even though Mary’s shorts flaunted her muscular Quidditch legs, and Marlene’s porcelain collarbones were glowing in the firelight, I hoped the conversation had changed—

“Ow- _owww!”_ Marlene spiraled into a fit of wolf-whistles and catcalls.The others erupted into laughter.“Look at those farmworker’s arms!”

“Get the girl a drink!” James said and Mary thrust the bottle towards me.

“You’re an _infant,”_ Remus chided, though his own voice lagged with alcohol.“Chloe, it’s disgusting.You don’t have to drink it.”

“Hey!It’s all I could find,” Peter said.

“Yeah, it’s doing the trick, isn’t it?”Mary nudged Remus and his face glowed. 

I took the bottle from her hand, which she seemed to have forgotten was outstretched.An overpowering smell, like my Mum’s floor cleaner, assaulted my nostrils.I tried not to gag. 

Marlene cast a look of solidarity.“Chloe doesn’t care.She’s got this.”

But as I brought the bottle to my lips, my eyes roved across the fire and met, for the first time, with Sirius’s.His face wavered in the heat.Still, I saw clearly as his gaze raked over my bare shoulders, and he gently thumbed his lips.I nearly dropped the bottle.He had never—not once—looked at me that way.

I turned my eyes to something, _anything_ else that wouldn’t send terrible little thrills through my body.Lily’s hair.It was the same color as the fire.But she was watching me in an unsettlingly knowing way.Her gaze flicked to Sirius, and then back to me.

_No._

I thrust the bottle to Peter so quickly that it sloshed on his cornflower shirt.Suddenly I was on my feet.“I have to go.”

James spread his arms theatrically.“Aw, what?Are we that boring?”

“Chloe, c’mon,” Marlene implored.“We were just teasing.You don’t have to drink.”

“I really wouldn’t recommend it, actually,” said Remus tipsily and Peter sulked.

The lack of commentary from Sirius meant he was still staring.“No, it’s okay.I forgot—I told Professor Sprout I would drop off my assignment tonight.You lot have fun!" 

I was already covering myself with the cloak, walking backwards so quickly that I tripped on an exposed root.Regaining my balance, I offered an odd little wave and turned around just in time to avoid smacking into a tree.

Marlene struggled to hide her laughter.“Alright, then, see you tomorrow!”

Somehow I managed not to sprint all the way to the castle.

❇

The library was deserted, of course.I had no reason to be there, having dropped off my assignment with Sprout hours before going to the lake, but it was the first place that came to mind.The rows and rows of books were labyrinthine and I needed somewhere to lose myself.Hide. 

Madame Pince had raised her head at my footsteps.But her scowl disappeared when she recognized one of her tolerated students.The library would be closing soon, surely; the chandeliers were smoking, having just been snuffed.Probably for Pince to create as unwelcoming an environment as possible and savor her last remaining hours of silence. 

Soon, the familiar scent of the Herbology section filled my lungs.Many of the books were enchanted and the area smelled like a forest.If I closed my eyes, it almost felt like I were outside, somewhere deep in the trees and rain-dampened ferns. 

Spare torches cast just enough light to read the book spines as my fingers trailed along the cracked surfaces.Absently I unsheathed and turned through the pages of a book, but I wasn’t actually reading.Instead, I went over the list again.The one I had practiced over the summer.

_He acts like a child._

_His family is worse than the Black Adder Society._

And finally, the most hauntingly convincing reason:

_Marlene._

“Bit early on for studying, don’t you think?” 

His voice was low but I still jumped.Sirius was standing on the other side of the aisle. 

It was a moment before the words would come.“I-I wanted a head start.” 

“‘Course you did.” 

He must have been directly in front of me.Through the empty spaces among the books I caught a glimpse of black dragonskin leather—he shifted and our eyes nearly met.Stifling a gasp, I took a step backwards. 

I tried not to focus on the obvious fact: Sirius had followed me here.He had left the fire, and Marlene, and sought me out.

“You’re very brown, you know,” he said slyly.

“So I’ve heard.”I was grateful he couldn’t see my blush.“What are you doing here?”

“Just looking.”But something in his tone said that he didn’t mean at the _books_.A feeling like a breeze ran up the backs of my legs.

“Pince could help you with that.”

He snorted quietly and said the words from last year, in Slughorn’s classroom, “You really _don’t_ like me, do you Chloe?”

“It doesn’t matter what I like.” 

Too late I realized what I had done.And now it was out in the universe, and I could never take it back.I was no good at this.Being practiced, and guarded, every single word premeditated and designed to keep him at bay—I would always slip up.Even after what had happened at Platform 9¾ last year, and after stewing in my anger and confusion all summer, I was helpless. 

“That’s funny,” he said thoughtfully, “It almost sounded like you _do_ like me.”

In frustration, I turned and nearly shouted, “Oh, come _on_ , Sirius!”It echoed in the silence and I expected—even prayed for—Pince to come storming over.But nothing came to save me from the moment, and so I said more quietly, “I would never… _get in the way_.”

His voice was a shade darker this time.“Marlene could have me if she wanted.” 

“You’re smitten, though.It’s obvious.And where is this all coming from?You’ve never been even remotely…interested…”

“Merlin, Chloe.”His voice was behind me now and I spun around.It must have been the reaction he wanted: I could hear his grin.“I’m not asking you to bear my _children_.”

The words hung in the air: _I’m asking for something else._

“Sorry,” I said.“I can’t.”

I imagined him shrugging one shoulder, the way he often did.“No need to be sorry.” 

The absence of disappointment was like a weight.Because somewhere, didn’t I know that all of this was my own making?That withholding something from myself—something that I wanted—was the pattern I had always followed? _No alcohol.No late nights.No distracting friendships._

_No Sirius._

I pushed off, continuing down the row of books.“I should finish.”

But I felt his presence shift from the other side, following.“Don’t mind me.I’ll just find some reading.”

Sirius continued to trail, silently, alongside me.I felt him like a shadow.A thrill shot up my spine at each glimpse of movement through our partition, or when I unsheathed a book and felt it tug, teasingly, from the other side.Surely he could hear my breath catching.For one wild moment, I didn’t care.It was a game and I let myself go on playing.

Tomorrow, I could be ashamed.Right now I was the kind of person who delighted in this.

We reached the end of the aisle and I stepped out—but there was only empty air.The breath crushed from my lungs.He’d already gone.

But I turned and there he was, waiting, dangerous and beautiful.I had never been alone with him before.Not like this.His face was startlingly symmetrical, save for one brow that rested lower than the other in constant wryness.I wondered if the look that I had written off as practiced was really authentic; just the unique makeup of his expression. 

Actually, I didn’t know much about Sirius at all.I hadn't let myself.

“I should go,” I said automatically. 

But even as he nodded, Sirius was slowly, deliberately closing the space between us, his hands clasped behind his back.I didn’t realize I was moving until I backed into a shelf so quickly that the contents rattled.All the while he came closer, eyes trained on mine, and when he was so near that I could smell the woodsmoke again I was suddenly lifting my chin, chest expanding, fingers gripped white onto the shelf. 

“Don’t,” I breathed as my eyes fluttered shut.

“Ah.Here we are.”

My eyes snapped open and he plucked a book from over my shoulder.I sank back down from my tiptoes, blinking, as he clapped a hand on the cover.“ _Merpeople: A Comprehensive Guide to Learning their Language and Customs_. This should do nicely.”

His eyes glimmered in the torchlight; I couldn’t speak.It _had_ been a game.And he had won.

“Goodnight, Chloe.”

The breath didn’t come rushing from my lungs until his footsteps faded completely.And then I burst from my spot like a wild animal, sprinting through the library.Madame Pince’s shriek came as an echo behind me; I was already gone.I hurried down the empty corridors, the smell of woodsmoke and pine lingering.It seemed ingrained in the fabric of my clothes, in my hair—a permanent mark that no amount of magic could remove.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It felt like my ears were stuffed with cotton. My parents were dead. That had to be it. McGonagall's next words sounded as if they were coming from another room, and I tried to force the sound back into my consciousness. "There's no cause for alarm, but we want to be certain that the news came to you first."

❇

  
  
Waking the next morning was like being pulled from another time and place. Another galaxy. I blinked the sleep from my eyes as the canopy of my four-poster materialized into familiarity. Below, in the common room, tin-can jazz played from a gramophone. There were the other familiar, early-morning sounds of Hufflepuff as well: quiet chatter of early rises, chairs scraping the stone floors. But the dormitory was silent.  
  
I felt different. Some new part of me, someplace both physical and somewhere deeper, was aching—and for a moment I didn’t know why. Then I remembered woodsmoke and pine. How close Sirius had been as he reached over my shoulder; the breath that had grazed my cheek.  
  
He had won, somehow. Maybe last night was insignificant to him—another girl, another attempt at something carnal—but it had said everything I’d been trying not to. And surely he would remember it for as long as we knew each other. There would always be that unspoken truth: that I had wanted him to kiss me. I had wanted him to press me against the bookshelf, and to feel his hands in the very places I was aching, right now.  
  
A sudden, horrible thought struck me. Would he tell Marlene?  
  
Groaning, I rolled over, wishing the swath of covers would swallow me whole. But the grandfather clock struck seven, a sadistic reminder that life would keep moving. It was the first day of classes; the other sleeping girls stirred into wakefulness. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. In the standing mirror against the wall I saw myself reflected amidst spotted gray light. Slowly I approached the glass.  
  
Maybe I _did_ look different this year. There was nothing particularly striking about my appearance, as always. But whatever childishness had remained seemed to have vanished overnight. In its place was something indecipherable.  
  
I had never paid much attention to appearances before now. I knew that my cheekbones were strong, but only because my mother often pointed them out, as if she’d chiseled them by hand. My wide eyes were somewhere between gray and blue. They had the irritating habit of making me appear constantly awestruck. But I had been called pretty before, mostly by older relatives. At the time the word had meant nothing.  
  
I turned my head side to side as if something would reveal itself; some tangible proof of what Sirius had seen in me, suddenly, from across the fire. Why he had followed me to the library. Why he left Marlene at the lake.  
  
“Better quit preening and get a move-on!” The mirror’s quip broke the silence and I jumped.  
  
There was more stirring from behind me. I darted into the loo before the others could wake.  
  


❇

  
  
The first week of classes went smoothly and uneventfully. I fell into the familiar rhythm with ease, watching my free time dissipate into this last year of academia. I was overloaded with coursework, as usual, on top of the Herbology apprenticeship. There had once been rumblings of making me Head Girl, due to my marks and pathetically clean record, but the professors seemed to agree that I didn’t offer much in the way of leadership. This was more than fine by me. I couldn’t imagine balancing other duties on top of it all.  
  
By the end of the first week, it was clear that my evenings would be devoted solely to schoolwork. But it was more than welcomed. I hadn't so much as said hello to Sirius in the days following the library incident.  
  
“Chloe! You in there?”  
  
Marlene rapped on my head as if it were a door. I sat upright so quickly that my vision blackened, but then she materialized where she stood over me, the branches of her favorite tree blotting the sun. It was still unseasonably warm and we had decided to meet outside to do our homework.  
  
“I’ve been saying your name for about five minutes,” she laughed. “Focused much?”  
  
“You could say that.” I looked helplessly at the pile of schoolwork. There were so many open books on the blanket that the flower-pattern fabric was barely visible. “I don’t know how I’ve got this busy already.”  
  
“Maybe because you’re a huge nerd who took on too many classes?” She winked, dropping her heavy bag unceremoniously.  
  
I laughed, glad for her easy nature. “That could have something to do with it.”  
  
“Whatever, at least you’re a good influence on me.” Marlene pointed to her cheek. “You’ve got ink on you, though, right here.”  
  
I rubbed the area with my hand. “Better?”  
  
She snorted in a way that said it most definitely was not. “Yeah, _totally.”_  
  
I was frowning and rubbing my cheek more hastily when she glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, there he is—Sirius, over here!”  
  
I froze. She hadn't mentioned him at all when we’d set up our study date. Professor Binns had been droning on about the witch trials in Germany, oblivious to no less than a dozen sleeping students, let alone our note-passing. _(Tomorrow, 3:00, tree?)_  
  
But now Sirius was striding casually across the grass towards us, a textbook under his arm. By the time he reached us the color in my cheeks had hopefully subsided.  
  
“Alright,” he said in his usual loud voice. “Let’s get this over with. Quidditch tryouts this afternoon.”  
  
Marlene furrowed her brow but the ever-present grin remained. “No one’s _forcing_ you, mate.”  
  
“Better have top marks to stay on the team, though. Chloe.” He nodded a hello to me without pause.  
  
My quill betrayed the tremble in my hands and I let it drop to the ground. While he and Marlene bickered (“I suspect you’re boycotting the matches again, Marlene?” “Of course I am, it’s _completely_ barbaric!”) I forced myself to look up from my lap—to search for a second glance, a smirk, anything to hint that the other night had actually happened.  
  
Nothing.  
  
“Oh, shit,” Marlene said from where she now crouched, fishing through her bag. “I left my notes on my bed.”  
  
“I’ll get them for you,” Sirius offered without hesitation. How she couldn’t see that he was in love with her was beyond me. But it seemed at that moment even she was struck by his offer, looking at him oddly.  
  
She laughed, “What, and somehow manage to get inside the girls’ dormitory? I’m sure you’ve tried it before, so you know it’s impossible. I’ll be right back.”  
  
I sat up straighter. “I’ll go with you.”  
  
My desperation was too obvious. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing the two of us conspiratorially. Why didn’t we want to be alone together?  
  
“No, it’s _fine,”_ she said again, slower this time, “I’ll be _right back.”_  
  
As she strode away, she cast a strange look over her shoulder. She was halfway to the castle when I finally dared to say, “That was close.”  
  
But Sirius wasn’t listening. He was lying in the grass, propped on one elbow and watching a passing group of Ravenclaw girls. They broke into smiles and whispers—which turned to looks of interest as they noticed me. I pressed into the tree as if it would absorb me.  
  
Grinning to himself, he said, “Sorry, what was close?”  
  
“Marlene.” When he only raised an eyebrow I said, flushing, “I meant—after the other night, in the library. She can’t find out.”  
  
“Don’t worry, there’s nothing _to_ find out.” He stopped, laughing quietly, and gestured for me to lean closer. “C’mere, you’ve got some…”  
  
Sirius reached over and rubbed his thumb on my cheek, where the ink must have remained. My throat nearly closed up. But he only nodded, murmuring, “There,” before returning to people-watching.  
  
I wanted to put a hand to my cheek, as if it would trap the feeling of his touch; I clenched my fist to stop myself. “But you… I mean, _something_ almost happened. I’m not making this up.”  
  
Am I?  
  
“No, you’re not,” he said easily. “But don’t fret, I’m not going to _come on to you_ again. As far as I’m concerned it never happened.”  
  
He was trying to be comforting: to say that I shouldn’t feel guilty, and that I didn’t hurt him in any way. No harm done. He couldn’t possibly know the fathomless pit that his words opened inside of me. Maybe he had already forgotten the details of that night, but I could scarcely breathe without smelling woodsmoke, or seeing the way his eyes glimmered in the torchlight.  
  
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said sarcastically. He plucked a clover flower, wrapping the green stem around his finger, and gave me a long look.  
  
“I’m just saying that it’s not going to _change_ anything. You’re Marlene’s friend. And I reckon that means you’re mine, too, whether you like it or not.”  
  
He grinned, nudging my leg with his fist and I smiled despite myself, a hollow contraction of facial muscles. The touch he gave today—little nudges; a brotherly rub on the cheek—felt nothing like what I had anticipated the other night. It seemed there had been one chance and I had missed it. Sirius had moved on.  
  
_And why wouldn’t he?_ I thought bitterly, watching him open his Potions textbook. _I’m not Marlene._  
  
I hoisted my mammoth Ancient Runes book into my lap and stared at the pages, absorbing nothing. The chirping of birds and warm breeze could have made this a picturesque moment. But it wasn’t between the right people.  
  
When Marlene returned minutes later, Sirius smiled up at her, his hair mussed into a funny cowlick by the wind.  
  
“Ridiculous,” she snorted, fixing his locks, and I tried to feel nothing.  
  


❇

  
  
_“Wake up.”_  
  
The whisper came sharply in the middle of the night. Michael Flint was standing over my bed. He was holding a candle, shining its light in my eyes, rendering him nothing more than a blurry outline of a human.  
  
I lay still, immobilized with fear, until the voice said again, “Chloe, wake up.”  
  
But it wasn’t Michael Flint. It was a girl. Her voice was familiar, but in my stupor I didn’t recognize Lily Evans until she lowered the candle from my eyes, revealing herself in its glow. Her robes appeared to have been thrown on hastily over her pajamas. Behind her, Emily stood, blinking the sleep from her eyes and hugging herself.  
  
“What’s going on?” I whispered as I sat up, still not sure that it wasn’t a dream.  
  
“Professor McGonagall wants to see you in her office,” Lily said gently. She was trying to not to alarm me, but nothing good ever came of being woken in the dead of night by the Head Girl and Deputy Headmistress.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely, “I wish I had more information.”  
  
I numbly pushed the covers aside and rose to my feet. I had barely found my slippers in the darkness before Lily was rushing us out the round doorway, through the common room, and into the corridors.  
  
We hurried through the blackened castle. The only sounds were the portraits rousing grumpily from sleep as we glided past. But they could have been screaming and I wouldn’t have heard over the thrumming that seemed to pass through my entire body. My eyes bore into the beacon of Lily’s candle, tearing away only when we reached McGonagall’s office at last.  
  
I turned to Emily. What passed between us was our first, actual shared look since that night in the baths. Her brow was knit with worry, teeth protruding from her downturned lips. For almost a year I had avoided her, and now, blinking in the sudden light that spilled from McGonagall’s opening door, we huddled together like frightened sheep.  
  
Lily cast a sympathetic look over her shoulder before stepping inside. My hand nearly reached for Emily’s as we trailed after, but I stopped myself.  
  
Professor McGonagall stood beside her desk as if she had just stopped pacing. She wore a nightcap and a long flannel robe was tied around her waist.  
  
“Girls,” she greeted in a strangely familiar manner. Something about these situations called for honesty, I supposed. “Miss Evans, would you…?”  
  
“Of course, Professor,” said Lily, casting me another pathetic smile. She returned to the corridors where she would await us. The door gently closed behind her and I wondered if she would be scared, alone in the darkness.  
  
A loud _POP!_ from the fireplace jolted me back into the moment. McGonagall’s lips were pursed. “Miss Fairchild, Miss Brighton, I’m afraid I must be quite frank. There’s been an incident near your homes.”  
  
It felt like my ears were stuffed with cotton. My parents were dead. That had to be it. McGonagall’s next words sounded as if they were coming from another room, and I tried to force the sound back into my consciousness. “…no cause for alarm, but we want to be certain that the news came to you first. Would you like to speak with them?”  
  
“What?” I said stupidly. Beside me, Emily was visibly trembling.  
  
The professor repeated gently, “There was an attack in Newark-on-Trent tonight. It appears to have been an isolated incident, and the Ministry is making sure that everyone is safe, but we wanted to offer you the chance to speak to your families.”  
  
_We._ She and the elusive Headmaster Dumbledore, who for some reason was not here tonight with his strange, twinkling eyes. Nor had he been there in the Hospital Wing after I was attacked. There had always been a feeling of him watching over all of Hogwarts like some deity, but where was he when needed?  
  
But these thoughts were the wrong ones. Irrelevant. In my dream-state Emily said, “That’s only thirty minutes from my house.”  
  
_Twenty from mine._  
  
McGonagall said again, “We don’t believe there is cause for alarm.”  
  
But why would she have woken us in the dead of night if there was nothing to be afraid of?  
  
I still hadn’t been able to speak, so Emily said worriedly, “Yes, please, let me talk to them.”  
  
“Of course.” McGonagall gestured to the fireplace. “Go on, dear. It’s all right.”  
  
My heart was still pounding in my ears. I vaguely registered Emily’s blurry shape as she crossed over to the crackling flames, throwing in a fistful of Floo Powder. After McGonagall’s reassuring nod, she leaned forward and called, “Mum? Dad?”  
  
There was a worrisome beat of silence, and then:  
  
“Emily, is that you?” Aunt Annabeth’s familiar voice was gravelly with sleep. It sounded like my Mum’s, but less lilting, as if she were plucking out each syllable with precision.  
  
“Mum, you’re all right!” Emily was crying fat tears, and for a moment I felt nothing but relief for her.  
  
Placatingly, McGonagall explained the situation to Aunt Annabeth, who had been married to a wizard for twenty years and understood the world of magic. A family of Goblins had been attacked. There was no cause for alarm, though they should remain inside, and the Ministry had sent Aurors to watch over the surrounding areas. They were in good hands.  
  
But then, despite myself, I was thinking about that night in the baths and how I had never so much as pointed a finger. I had been so stupid to think it was isolated. Maybe Michael Flint had left Hogwarts, but the scar would remain, and there would be others. The Black Adders were just one root of the tree. Something terrible was happening, inside these walls and out in the world, and we were powerless to stop it.  
  
I wished Marlene was here.  
  
Suddenly I realized that McGonagall and Emily were watching me, and I knew it was my turn. My Aunt’s face had disappeared from the smoldering embers.  
  
“Go ahead, Miss Fairchild,” said the Headmistress. It was strange to hear her using her gentlest voice.  
  
I nodded, swallowing the pebble that seemed to have lodged in my throat, and crossed to the fireplace. McGongall’s outstretched hand contained a pewter vessel of Floo powder. I tossed the ashy substance onto the flames, which roared up several feet, turning a violent green. Bracing myself on the hearth I leaned into them, feeling the sensation of air brushing against my face.  
  
My home address came as a breathy whisper. “Fourteen Moorhouse Road, Laxton.”  
  
Suddenly my vision shifted and I saw, ringed by the green flames, the blackened den of my home. I could smell the lingering scent of my father’s pipe smoke, and the food that had been cooked hours before. The house was quiet, the fire casting green light and eerie shadows around the room.  
  
At last my dry lips parted and I called, tremblingly, “Hello?”  
  
Two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds. Nothing.  
  
My heart quickened. My parents were light sleepers. They were always afraid of somebody breaking into the house despite Laxton being safe and remote. If they were here, surely they would have heard me.  
  
“Mum, Dad?” I called more frantically, “It’s Chloe. Come downstairs.”  
  
Turning my head, I was pulled dizzyingly back into the candle-glow of McGonagall’s office, and gave her a frightened look. “There’s no one.”  
  
“Try again.” She spoke reassuringly but her mouth was pressed into a thin line.  
  
“Mum! Dad!” I shouted this time. “Are you there? Hello?”  
  
But there was no response, and I couldn’t waste any more time. I whirled around, grabbing another fistful of Floo Powder—Professor McGonagall rushed forward, crying, “Chloe, _wait!”_ But I had already curled my arm overhead. Just before I released my grip, my parents’ faces crowded my vision as they crouched, staring awestruck into the flames.  
  
“Chloe? What’s happening? How are you—Are you here?”  
  
I nearly collapsed into the fireplace with relief; even McGonagall released a breath she had been holding. I felt her tight grip disappear from my arm.  
  
“No, I’m at Hogwarts,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. There was no point in frightening them more than they were inevitably going to be. “There’s just… Something happened, and we—”  
  
“What’s happened?” fired my father. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m fine,” I assured, not actually certain if that was the truth.  
  
“It’s because of that school, isn’t it,” said my Mum, her voice trembling. It wasn’t a question.  
  
I struggled to find the right words; to be firm but consoling. “Mum, please, it would have happened whether or not I had come to Hogwarts. It’s something else. Something bigger.”  
  
I hadn’t meant to say the last words, but it was as if the realization came as they left my lips. My parents stared fearfully.  
  
“If you please,” said McGonagall gently and I looked over my shoulder, again feeling the dizzying sensation of being in two places at once. “I can speak to them, if you’d like.”  
  
“Who’s that?” My mother’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  
  
“It’s the school headmistress, Mum. She wants to talk with you about something.”  
  
Their faces darkened. My father at last said, uneasily, “All _right…”_ It was the tone he had used once, right before I had confessed that Emily and I had broken the kitchen window, as children.  
  
“Okay,” I murmured, and perhaps I should have given a more final goodbye, but I couldn’t stand the way they were looking at me. Like I had done something wrong. Like I had invited this darkness into their world simply by being born the way that I was.  
  
Stepping backwards, I pulled myself away from the scene and cast a downward glance to Professor McGonagall. “Thank you,” I said stupidly. “I’m very tired, though.”  
  
And then I walked out of the office. McGonagall didn’t protest; something in the way I carried myself must have told her not to. But I felt her sympathetic gaze on my retreating back. When the door closed behind me, with Emily still inside, I was left in the darkness of the corridor.  
  
Lily had been seated on the stone floor, asleep against the wall. But at the sound of the door she jolted awake.  
  
“Sorry,” I whispered, not sure why.  
  
“It’s alright,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Everything okay?”  
  
I smiled down at her despite myself. She really was _so_ nice. It was how she managed to defend a person like Severus Snape, I figured. He was probably dying to become a Black Adder. He had cast me his fair share of dark glances, never actually speaking, but Lily had always defended him to others.  
  
“Yeah, everything’s okay,” I said. “Thank you.”  
  
“Walk you back?” Though it was only an offer she was already standing up, tugging her robes around her pajamas.  
  
“It’s alright, you’ll just have to come back for Emily. I’ll be okay.”  
  
She nodded, her green eyes staring through me. I had the feeling she had wanted to use the walk as a means to tell me something. But it seemed the conversation was over. With a polite smile I said, “‘Night, then.”  
  
“Chloe?”  
  
I stopped. The look was still on her face, as if the words were right on the edge of her tongue. It was the most time I’d spent around Lily outside of a classroom; certainly the first time we’d been alone together.  
  
She said, as if struggling to find the words, “He’s… not quite ready yet.”  
  
My brow furrowed. “Who?”  
  
I could see her cheeks flush even in the low torchlight. “Sirius.”  
  
But if she was blushing then I was positively luminescent. It felt like my whole body was on fire. “I’m not sure what you mean.”  
  
She wet her lips, running her fingers through her hair. It seemed that this wasn’t a conversation she _wanted_ to have, so much as _needed_ to have. “Just… don’t take it personally if he isn’t where you are, right now. There’s everything with his family and, y’know, there’s Marlene…”  
  
I couldn’t believe this was happening.  
  
“Just give it time,” she shrugged, but her voice was kind. Reassuring.  
  
And then, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say—and because I knew she had seen me watching him, across the fire that night—I mumbled, “Thanks.”  
  
She smiled. “Okay. Well, see you in Arithmancy tomorrow?”  
  
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”  
  
The sun was starting to rise as I walked briskly through the corridors. The night still felt like a dream; I dreaded the next conversation with my parents. It felt like there were hundreds of eyes watching me and I wanted to run all the way back to the Hufflepuff common room. But I forced myself to walk, as a punishment for my slip-up with Lily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter with quite a bit going on! The scene in McGonagall's office was a struggle to write, so hopefully it turned out okay. I wanted to convey a sense of danger, but also showcase the relationship Chloe has with her parents, while not being too overpowering so that Lily's conversation could have impact as well. (Wow so much going on.)
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts in a review! ♥


	9. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You are cordially invited to the second annual Marauders’ Ball. Bully for you! If you accept—and honestly, you’d be an idiot not to—then meet us at the One-Eyed Witch at ten o’clock next Saturday. Don’t be caught. And wear your dancing shoes!”_

“You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you.  
I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”

― Tracy Chevalier, _Girl with a Pearl Earring_

❇

  
  
The cold air bit at my cheeks and flushed them berry-red. Frost crunched beneath my every step across and my eyes watered, a combination of the chill and my sleeplessness. It was nearly seven o’clock on a Saturday morning. The grounds were silent, save for the cawing of crows. Hearing them made it impossible to ignore: November was here and the warm months were over.   
  
Fog curled around my ankles as I trekked further down the hill. Its cloudy presence hung, phantom-like, over the lake. For a moment I considered stopping to watch its barely perceptible shifting. But there was too much to do.   
  
Because Professor Sprout was overwhelmed with work I had volunteered to tend the plants on weekends. Now, more than ever, it was important to make a lasting impression with her. Her reference letter would be integral in being accepted into Herbology school after graduation—and if I weren’t, it would mean moving back home with my parents. There was no doubt that, given the events of this year, they would try to dissuade me from a magical life entirely.  
  
There was no point in lying to them about the attacks that night. Photos of the poor Goblin family were all over the papers, robbing them of any privacy. It was awful: four of them, murdered in their beds as they slept, simply because they were non-human. The man they were calling You-Know-Who was suspected. It felt superstitious, the way thousands were incapable of saying his name, as if by not summoning the evil spirit, it would move on.  
  
My parents had been inconsolable for weeks. But how could I possibly have comforted them? This man and his followers were targeting Muggles, sympathizers, and families with impure blood. That was us. So I told them nothing of the rumblings I heard in the corridors, or the fog of uneasiness that seemed to settle over Hogwarts. Even Marlene was rarely spotted these days without her nose in a newspaper and its awful stories.   
  
I ignored the casual mentioning in their letters—between updates on their sheep and dogs—of how blackened the world was growing around us, like a bowl of fruit gone to rot. My father started sleeping with his old shotgun by the bed. I didn't tell them that it wouldn’t do any good.   
  
As I reached greenhouse seven, these thoughts were pushed back into the tiny corner I had reserved in my mind, like forcing clothing into an overstuffed trunk. _Be here now, Chloe._ It was easier to ignore what was happening in the world with my responsibilities. Maybe that was why I had volunteered my weekend mornings to watering and sunning the plants. It was better than lying in my four-poster, worrying about my parents’ growing paranoia.  
  
Or trying to stamp out thoughts of Sirius.   
  
Shaking my head as if scattering the images, I fumbled for my wand. The sun was just starting to rise over the hills and caught my fogged breath in its light. I still hadn’t found my wand when I heard a loud rustling over my shoulder; the Whomping Willow, half a Quidditch pitch away, was twisting and turning as if in a great storm. But that wasn’t what surprised me. It was the figures near the tree. They were running towards the greenhouses as if to escape the tree’s wrath, but their hoots of laughter were a stone through the silence.  
  
It took a moment to realize, through my still-blurred vision, that despite the cold they were naked. Three of them darted behind a blackberry thicket where they had apparently stashed their clothes. The last figure was running in circles, arms flapping like a great bird as he cawed loudly, mimicking the crows that scattered at the sudden ruckus. And it was another moment of shameless staring before I recognized them.  
  
Of _course._  
  
“Prongs, put your pants on!” Remus laughed tiredly. He looked worse for wear as he rested on the frosty ground, as if he had barely managed to pull his clothes back on. One arm remained inside his jumper rather than in its sleeve.  
  
“Never!” James was now doing cartwheels, completely starkers. As a flush crept up my neck their cries of laugher and disgust echoed across the lake. “And I didn’t hear you telling Padfoot to cover up!”  
  
“That would be fine, too…” Peter’s head poked out from the blackberry thicket.  
  
“This frigid air isn’t doing you any favors, mate!” Sirius called to James as he emerged from the brush, buttoning a shirt over his bare chest. There was a kind of happy exhaustion hanging over them, like the fog, as if they’d been awake the entire night.  
  
When their laughter was silenced, I realized a beat too late that it was because I had been spotted. Even James froze and someone’s voice drifted over, “Oh, _shit.”_  
  
I jumped like I’d been electrocuted, searching feverishly for my wand in the pockets that now seemed ten times their size. _“Come on, come on, come on, come on…”_  
  
“Relax, it’s just Fairchild.”  
  
“Oi, Chloe!” James was unabashedly tugged his trousers on. “Enjoy the show?”  
  
Having at last retrieved my wand, I feverishly unlocked the greenhouse and rushed inside without response. The door closed on their laughter _(“You’ve probably scarred her for life!”)_ and I leaned against it to bury my face in my cool hands.   
  
I’d never laid eyes on a naked boy before. Not even when Emily would try to embarrass me with dirty pictures, found shoved in a drawer with her Mum’s pantyhose. I had always screwed my eyes shut to her shrieking laughter.  
  
 _At least it wasn’t Sirius._ I forced myself not to recall the swatch of olive skin, framed by the stark white of his unbuttoned shirt.   
  
There was a knock behind me and I leapt away. But hiding would only make things worse. I groaned, “Come in.”  
  
Peter’s head poked through the door and he smiled sheepishly. At least he was as beetroot as me. Instead of entering the greenhouse, like anyone else would have, he remained in his silly pose.  
  
“Sorry about that.” Before I could even speak—and probably to say something idiotic—he passed a small envelope through the opening. “Anyway, we wanted to give you this.”  
  
Timidly I took the envelope. It was addressed to me in what looked like a boy’s poor attempt at calligraphy. Then Peter said, in one long rush as he struggled to make eye-contact, “Well, okay, bye then Chloe, sorry again!”  
  
The door closed. He paused on the threshold for a moment as if collecting his breath; I could see his blurry figure through the fogged glass walls.  
  
“How’d it go, you silver-tongued devil?” James’s voice came from just outside. They must have all been huddled there, listening.  
  
“Shut up, mate,” Peter murmured. He was probably ruffling his hair with embarrassment, the way he often did.  
  
Their banter grew quieter as they headed off, hopefully to the castle and their dormitory, rather than some other stupid escapade. The greenhouse was thick with silence and humidity. I felt incredibly stupid. But, as usual, they hadn’t seemed to mind anything that had just occurred. I couldn’t even _imagine_ what I would have done, had they stumbled across _me_ naked.  
  
When I blinked I saw it again: the darkened library, the flickering torchlight, Sirius’s advancing figure. But this time the memory had changed, and my skin was bare and awaiting, covered in goosebumps.  
  
Suddenly the letter leapt from my hands, startling me. The envelope tore itself open like a Howler, the folds in the enclosed parchment moving like a mouth as James’s voice boomed in an affected, posh accent:  
  
 _“You are cordially invited to the second annual Marauders’ Ball. Bully for you! If you accept—and honestly, you’d be an idiot not to—then meet us at the One-Eyed Witch at ten o’clock next Saturday. Don’t be caught. And wear your dancing shoes!”_  
  
And with that, the letter returned to its inanimate self, fluttering to the stone floor. The greenhouse was silent again. But I squinted in confusion. Who in the world were the Marauders, and why were they throwing a ball?   
  


❇

  
  
_“Peter_ gave you the invitation?”  
  
I nodded and Marlene threw her head back, laughing throatily, until I smiled despite myself. “What?”  
  
“Oh, he’s completely besotted with you, is all.”  
  
My face was already blotchy with the chill, but her comment certainly didn’t help. “No he isn’t, he was just being nice.”  
  
“If you say so,” she said in a sing-song, taking a long drink from her cider.   
  
Her arm was linked through mine as we strolled through the bustling streets of Hogsmeade. Two enormous cups of cider warmed our hands; my throat tingled with the drink’s syrupy-sweetness. Despite the cold there was no snow on the ground. The sky had threatened as much, in the days since I received the strange invitation, but Hogwarts had yet to see a single flake.  
  
“Don’t get me wrong, even if Peter hadn’t invited you then I would have. You _have_ to come.”  
  
“I just… What _is_ it?”  
  
She smiled at me, wide-eyed, like she was watching a spectacular memory playing out on a screen. “It’s absolutely brilliant, you’ll see. Wear a ton of makeup and look hot.”  
  
I didn’t own makeup, or clothes that didn’t look like something from _The Sound of Music_ , but chose not to comment. Whatever this ball was, it surely wasn’t school-compliant by the very fact that James, Sirius, Peter and Remus had created it.   
  
The fact that they had a nickname for their group made me uneasy. It was more ridiculous than anything, really: four legal adults taking the time to create little code names for themselves. But something about secret clubs with monikers put me on edge. The Marauders. The Black Adders.  
  
Two young girls shoved past us, nearly bowling Marlene over, and she bellowed, “Oi, watch it!”  
  
“Sorry!” they whimpered (I offered an apologetic smile on her behalf) before continuing towards the Three Broomsticks. It was notorious for being the place where the popular boys congregated—boys like Sirius Black and James Potter.  
  
Hogsmeade weekends were always more hype than their worth. Everyone around us behaved as if they’d never stepped foot outside the castle in their lives. True, these weekends were the best thing to come out of being a Third-Year. But you can only buy your weight in Honeydukes so many times.  
  
We stopped at a bench across from the Three Broomsticks. By now we were killing time; the carriages bound for the castle wouldn’t return for another hour. We hadn’t intended to come at all, but Marlene had been struck by a craving for Honeydukes’ cider, which the Hogwarts House Elves apparently couldn’t even begin to replicate.  
  
It was freezing outside. I was dying to be in the warmth of the pub across the street, but apparently the Three Broomsticks was now on Marlene’s list of protested establishments. The vanilla bean used in their Butterbeer recipe was harvested using slave labor, apparently.   
  
I wasn’t sure where she heard this information. And I didn’t mention that half of the sugar in Honeydukes’s candy—and the cider we were drinking—probably followed the same practice. But I wasn’t about to spend an entire Hogsmeade trip out in the cold, when Honeydukes had four perfectly warm fireplaces roaring.  
  
As I tugged my hat over my cold ears, Marlene released something between a scoff and a snort of laughter. I followed her eyes to the window of the pub, where James and Sirius were pressing their faces to the glass, crossing their eyes and puffing out their cheeks. I grimaced—there was no telling how long it had been since those windows had seen a good washing.  
  
“Wow,” I managed.  
  
Marlene quirked an eyebrow at Sirius, who had stopped to fix a wide grin on her. “Is he _really_ going to crash Lily and James’s first, actual date?”  
  
“Wouldn’t doubt it.”  
  
The fact that he was gazing in the way Shakespearean heroes did their lovers was, of course, lost on her. She returned to her cider without a second thought. But I must have been staring because she turned a smirk on me.   
  
“What?”  
  
My intention was to shake my head; to murmur _never mind,_ as always. But I heard myself saying, as if they were somebody else’s words entirely, “It’s just—well—you say that Peter fancies me, but you haven’t even _noticed…”_ I trailed off, eyes returning to the window where Sirius had disappeared with James.  
  
I expected an eye-roll; a sarcastic grin; a shake of her head. But the look on Marlene’s face was one I’d never seen before, and it stilled me mid-sip from my cider. She looked at a complete loss. As if she were presented with an Arithmancy problem that she couldn’t solve. Like she knew _what_ she was supposed to do, but couldn’t grasp _how._  
  
Marlene mumbled, as if struggling to find the words, “It’s not that I don’t _know…”_  
  
I waited, but she only gazed sullenly at the cup in her lap, and we fell into silence. When at last the first snowflakes of winter began to fall, it was several moments before she snapped from her reverie to notice them, blinking in surprise.  
  
I nudged her gently with my shoulder. “So, who’s going to this ball thing?”  
  
She seemed grateful for the change in subject. “You, me, Lily… Oh, and we’ve invited Mary. She’s in a rough spot, but you already know that, obviously.”  
  
“No, what’s wrong? Did she and Remus stop talking?” I knew they had been skirting around the edge of dating, he too shy to pursue her, but they had seemed fine at the lake.  
  
Marlene blinked in surprise. “You haven’t…? Honestly, Chloe, you’re taking on _way_ too much if you haven’t heard. It’s all over school.”   
  
I only waited expectantly so she said, “She was attacked the other night. A couple of Slytherins tried to use some really nasty magic. She got away without being hurt, and they’re going to be expelled, obviously, but it’s terrible.”  
  
It was as if a bomb had gone off and in the aftershock my ears were ringing. Marlene was giving me a sad look, but she couldn’t possibly have known what I was thinking. “Wh-who was it?”  
  
She sneered. “Alex Mulciber did it, but he had help from those _bitches,_ Artemisa and Coraline. They let him into the girls’ loo. It’s absolutely insane. We all knew he was a posh brat, but nobody could’ve guessed he’d do something like this.”  
  
Except for me.  
  
I could have stopped this. If I had just told McGonagall about what had happened last year, then maybe he wouldn’t have attacked Mary. At least Artemisia and Coraline would have been expelled. I remembered the way their bare skin glinted in the poor torchlight, slick with water, and almost as hard as their smiles.  
  
Or maybe Alex Mucliber was as rotten as the rest. Maybe he would have attacked Mary without their help. The poison ran deeper than those who had there, that night.  
  
Marlene said, “You okay? It’s awful news.”  
  
And there it was: another moment when I could have said something. I could have pointed out that Artemisia and Coraline were part of the group calling themselves the Black Adders; that there were others. That in expelling them, they had only cut off one of the Hydra’s heads.  
  
But how many were there, still within the castle walls, watching me?  
  
So I only nodded and took a drink from my cider. It had gone cold.  
  


❇

  
  
The feelings of safety disappeared after the Hogsmeade trip. The following week I took extra precautions to avoid being alone, meaning no more early morning walks to the greenhouses, or late nights in the library. If the Black Adders had dared to attack another student, they were more drunk with self-righteousness than I’d thought.   
  
Mary was brave in ways that I couldn’t have been. Despite the attempts not to, my eyes roved to her during meals, lessons, and in the corridors. It seemed that Marlene and the others—the Marauders, I supposed—were with her at all times. Mary laughed, then, her pretty face shining like a lantern.   
  
But in the rare moments she was alone, her facade was made of granite. Whether it was a talisman to ward off others, or a new inability to smile, I wasn’t sure.  
  
The Black Adders were livid. Expelling three of their own—ruining chances of succeeding family businesses; acceptance into law school; trust funds—put Mary in the crosshairs. But they were like household ghosts, never seen save for evidence of their discontent: the cupboards opened in the night, the book falling suddenly from the shelf.   
  
One morning, during breakfast, Mary’s scream had split through the quiet chatter of the Great Hall. A dead mouse was in her oatmeal. But she had only stilled herself, the look of granite returning, and gathered her books. Lily Evans was by her side straightaway. Her dark look smoldered across the hall to the Slytherin table. But in the end, she couldn’t prove who had done it, and nobody was punished.  
  
For this I felt justified in my silence. It was awful, the cross that Mary had to bear, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. If nothing was going to be done to prevent another attack—again, where was Albus Dumbledore?—then I had to remain quiet.  
  
This was how I quelled my guilt as I sat by the crackling fire in Hufflepuff basement. Winter had arrived, abruptly and unapologetically, since the Hogsmeade trip. Nearly a foot of snow had covered the grounds over the last three days. The common room was full of people studying, reluctant to forego the cheery warmth for the library.  
  
My Ancient Runes assignment was sprawled across the table: fourteen inches on Norse runes in the second century and how they influenced myth. With a start I realized that one of my library books, _Reading the Past,_ was missing from my bag. I must have left it at in the Great Hall during dinner.  
  
A groan escaped me. More than half of my citations were within that book; I couldn’t even begin the assignment without it. But the skies had long since darkened, the castle corridors with them, and I didn’t want to venture out.  
  
Quill Hopkins was at the next table over. Maybe she could walk with me; we were almost friends. But an enormous book was propped before her like a child’s fort. Her frazzled bun looked like a pincushion for quills as she scrawled furiously on a parchment.  
  
I decided not to ask her.  
  
When the rounded door creaked open, the dark and flickering corridor appeared a hundred times longer than usual. There was no telling who else would be roaming the halls. But if I didn’t turn in this assignment, my marks would suffer, and so would my chances at Herbology school. Squaring my shoulders and sucking in a deep breath, I stepped out, only to immediately cry out in alarm.  
  
Sirius was leaning against the wall, just to the left of the doorway. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said in a way that suggested he most certainly did.  
  
As he walked towards me, with his hands in his pockets, I instinctually took a step back. My mouth twitched in an attempt at a smile. This was how things were now: casual friends. If you could even call us friends.   
  
“How long have you been standing here?”  
  
“Not long.” But then he grinned. “Alright, thirty minutes. But I swear, there was _nobody_ coming in or out! Are you lot performing some sort of group suicide in there?”  
  
I couldn’t help my snort of laughter. “Exams studying, so, basically. But—erm—what are you doing here?”  
  
“Can’t I just say hello to my favorite Hufflepuff?”  
  
I stared blankly before gesturing behind me. “Oh, do you want me to go and get Joanna?” It was no secret that he and Joanna McCoy had their fair share of carnal activity during the previous fall.  
  
But he rolled his eyes. “I meant _you,_ you nerd.”  
  
Naturally his comment sent my cheeks smoldering. He gave something between a smile and a nervous grimace, before with a little bounce of his feet he confessed, “Okay, actually, I have a huge favor to ask of you. We have a favor.”  
  
“We?”  
  
“My mates and I.”  
  
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, you mean the _Maraud—”  
  
“Shhh!”_ he hissed with laugher, actually covering my mouth with his hand.   
  
I felt my body stiffen, but he was looking past me. The door to the common room was still open. Several heads had turned towards the scene: Sirius Black and his latest conquest. I locked eyes with Emily, where she sat with a textbook on the sofa, her lips parted in shock.  
  
“Come on.” Sirius had already taken several steps backwards. “Let’s go for a walk, and you can hear my proposition.”  
  
And maybe it was the warmth from his hand that lingered on my lips. Or the satisfaction of showing Emily that I didn’t need her—that I was getting on just fine without her friendship—that made my decision for me. I followed after Sirius into the dimness, the ancient runes book forgotten altogether.  
  
As I caught up to him I tugged my grandmother-worthy cardigan tighter. Despite the chill, he of course was playing the part, wearing only wearing a tee-shirt with some Muggle band I’d never head of.   
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
He merely looked down at me, eyebrows raised expectantly over his glimmering eyes.  
  
“How do you do it? All of this—this sneaking about, and drinking alcohol, and—”  
  
“Marauding?” His teeth glinted in the torchlight.  
  
“Merlin,” I muttered to his satisfied laughter. “It’s like you lot don’t worry about getting into trouble at all.”  
  
“Ooh, that’s right, _trooouble.”_ He wiggled his fingers menacingly.  
  
“I’m serious! Half of the things you do could get you _expelled,_ never mind the lesser stuff. Don’t you worry about being caught? Or do you just spend your life in detention?”  
  
We reached the top of a staircase that descended into more darkness. We stopped and I noticed he was smiling at me. “What?”  
  
“Well…this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”  
  
He was probably right. But I was too busy looking at the stairs, warily, to respond. Somehow, in all of my years in the Hufflepuff basement, I’d never encountered them. And if someone had asked me to find them again in the morning I probably wouldn’t be able to. But none of this was as unsettling as the fact that the stairs led to someplace even _deeper_ below the castle.  
  
“I just don’t understand how you do it,” I said at last, knotting my arms before my stomach.  
  
“Don’t worry, you will.” Sirius was rummaging in his trouser pockets. There was the sound of crinkling paper as he performed a nonverbal Lumos spell. My impressed look disappeared at the sight of a folded parchment, now illuminated in his grasp. “Besides, it helps to have the proper tools.”  
  
I looked up at him skeptically and he intoned, _“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a lot happened in this chapter! Mary's attack, and Marlene's confusion about Sirius, and the Marauders asking Chloe for a favor. Their time at Hogwarts is dwindling, meaning we'll be moving on to the bulk of the story soon, when the characters have graduated. I would love to hear your thoughts and theories, especially about Marlene's confusion, as it's quite a large part of the story.
> 
> Thank you for reading ♥
> 
> (Also, I don't own The Sound of Music!)


	10. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How could he be so certain? How was he so sure that the entire world had laid itself out for the taking by Sirius Black? Most unsettlingly, why I was standing here, entertaining the idea in the first place? Last year’s Chloe would have never even followed him down the corridor.

❇

  
  
The map was a feat of magic. It nearly drowned out every alarm going off in my rule-abiding body:  _You’ll get in trouble! Go back to your common room! Don’t follow him!_  My hand moved to the parchment of their own accord, running over its textured surface. A pair of footprints labeled “Argus Filch” traveled a corridor outside the library. I laughed in delighted shock at the cat’s paws trailing after him.  
  
“Where did you find this?”  
  
_“Find_  it? We created the bloody thing.”  
  
That four students had created such a device was astounding—especially the four most disobedient students in the entire school. Sirius watched in an attempt to appear smug, but it was like trying to hide a lightbulb behind tissue paper: he was positively glowing with childlike pride.  
  
I could retain a textbook’s contents to a tee, bring a Mandrake back to life with only a bit of water, and brew potions that rivaled those of Professor Slughorn. But this was something else. This was  _ingenuity._  
  
Sirius said, “We don’t show this to just anyone, you know.”  
  
“I should hope not, if you intend on keeping it.” Regardless of his feat, Sirius needed a favor. Flattery, right now, could only mean so much.  
  
He eyed me curiously. “Coming, then?”  
  
My eyes landed on two pairs of footprints in the map’s corner. Their names were emblazoned in ink: Sirius Black and Chloe Fairchild. Alone in the dark once more.  
  
I nodded. “Yes.”  
  
As we descended the staircase, the air grew damp. It was no surprise: the staircase ended somewhere below the dungeons, in a low tunnel with a worn, dirt path. Harsh wandlight bleached the stone walls that were slick with moisture. It wasn’t until I felt the change in the air—from stale to cold, fresh,  _living_  air—that I realized Sirius was leading us outside.  
  
The tunnel dead-ended at a small door. It must have once been for the House Elves, no more than a decade ago, when they weren’t allowed to use the same entrance as humans. Frigid air seeped through the cracks of its warped wood.   
  
“Wait.”  
  
Sirius’s eyes flashed with uneasiness. But I only unsheathed my wand; a murmur, and the tingling warmth of a Heating Charm draped around us like a blanket. I gave a small nod and, with satisfaction, Sirius unlatched the door.  
  
I nearly gasped. The grounds were positively covered in snow, glittering like a great, frosted cake. There was a stillness to the air I had never witnessed before. It was beautiful.   
  
“Where are we going?” I finally asked the burning question, puffs of breath disappearing into the night. My slippers had already soaked through.  
  
Sirius extinguished the _Lumos_  spell and said, without meeting my eyes, “Your favorite. The greenhouses.”  
  
There was the first unsettling pang. But I was too preoccupied with wondering how he became a different version of himself—how he could look at me like he did Marlene—when we were alone in the night. When he wanted something.   
  
Breaking our gaze, I used my wand to blast a jet of heat that melted the snow from our path. “This way.”  
  
The journey was short, and when we arrived, the greenhouses looked like they were made from ice themselves. Sirius said carefully, “If my memory serves correctly, greenhouse one should do the trick.”  
  
I should have realized then what he was looking for; what he was asking me to do. But I didn’t, and at my whispering of the password the door creaked open. The humid air was like a damp cloth pressed to our cheeks. But even this familiar scene felt eerie in the dark. Though I knew it were impossible, I swore I felt the gazes of creatures that were hiding among the plants.  
  
“Well?” I broke the silence.  
  
Sirius bit his lip, considering. “Well… We were hoping that you could help us find some… Pasithea mushrooms.”  
  
My own lips parted in shock. Pasithea mushrooms. “You want me to give you  _hallucinogens?”_  
  
Now that the secret was out he couldn’t stop talking. “It’s for all of us, you included! At the ball,” he said, as if this inclusion would pacify me. “And we wouldn’t ask you if we didn’t have to.”  
  
“They’re still highly _illegal.”_  
  
“Yeah, because the Ministry is a bunch of fascist pigs who want to control everything.”  
  
I snorted at this ill-formed statement, hugging my chest. “You sound like Marlene.”  
  
“Mushrooms are harmless, really! We’ve done them loads of times, and look how we turned out!”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
He ignored the jibe. “Remus usually goes foraging, but he was sick. Something about there being no time to dry them now. And trust me, you  _don’t_  want the lot of us trying to suss them out. We’d all be dead.”  
  
At my silence he prodded gently, “Doesn’t Sprout keep some in here?”  
  
“I don’t know,” I lied.   
  
He grinned. “Yes you do.”  
  
I forced myself not to look at the potted fern against the far wall. It was unremarkable next to the other, more magical plants. But when its fronds were tickled a floorboard popped open, beneath which Sprout kept a locked chest. Barely larger than my two hands, it contained vials of plants and herbs that possessed hallucinogenic or highly poisonous properties. When Sprout showed it to me the previous year, she forbade me from ever telling another student. How the Marauders had this information was beyond me.  
  
“Everything like that is kept under careful inventory,” I said. “She’d notice if something went missing.”  
  
“Don’t  _you_  do her inventory?”  
  
The familiar irritation was resurfacing. Didn’t he care what could happen to his friends, or what he was asking of me? “I could lose my apprenticeship, Sirius.”  
  
_And be expelled, and face a criminal record, and ruin my chances at Herbology school._  
  
“Then we won’t get caught,” he shrugged easily. Sensing my exasperation he switched gears, taking a step closer. “We like you, Chloe. And I promise that we won’t let anything bad happen to you, or your job with Sprout.”  
  
How could he be so certain? How was he so sure that the entire world had laid itself out for the taking by Sirius Black? Most unsettlingly, why I was standing here, entertaining the idea in the first place? Last year’s Chloe would have never even followed him down the corridor.  
  
I glanced to the potted fern. Truthfully, Professor Sprout didn’t keep a close watch over her inventory. It all fell to me. And Remus was right: Pasithea mushrooms were surely in the Forbidden Forest, right now. What we used could easily be replaced.  
  
Sirius reached over to touch a lock of my hair. With a gentle tug, he said, his breath tickling my face, “C’mon, Chloe. Let us show you some _real_  fun.”  
  


❇

  
  
_I don’t look like myself._  
  
It was my first answer to Marlene’s question as stepped away from me, her look of intense concentration giving way to one of pride: “So, what do you think?”  
  
“I think…”  
  
I turned my head in the mirror, inspecting my face like it were a stranger’s. It may as well have been. The Seventh-Year girls’ dormitory was empty, but Marlene and I had locked ourselves in the loo. Anyone who knew me  _at all_  would have been suspicious to see me like this.   
  
Perhaps that was the point of this Marauders’ ball, though: to be someone else for an evening. Someone dangerous. Someone who snuck out of the castle with boys in the dead of night, and who unlocked the tiny chest hidden beneath the floorboards to extract four dried Pasithea mushroom caps.   
  
Four was surely enough, Sirius had said. My hand had been shaking as I passed them over. They were practically weightless and looked more like dried berries: ruby red and impossibly small for their properties.  
  
Sirius had positively beamed at me over his hand. “You’re the best, Chloe.”  
  
_The best._  
  
Marlene’s prodding tone jarred me. “You think…?” She gestured impatiently.  
  
I laughed with embarrassment, turning on the faucet to run cold water over my wrists. “I think we’re going to be late.”  
  
She shoved me, a thin strap of her black dress slipping off her shoulder. “Oh, come off it, you’re going to  _love_  it. And you look great. I’ve truly outdone myself.”  
  
When she turned away to collect her items—powder brushes, tubes of expensive lipstick, cans of hair spray—I cast a cursory glance in the mirror. A blur of dark red fabric, thighs bare over tall stockings, tousled hair. My mother would have locked me in my bedroom for the rest of my life.   
  
Suddenly the doorknob rattled from the other side. There came a muffled groan, “Oh, come on…”  
  
Hurriedly we gathered the rest, throwing our cloaks hastily over our shoulders and trying to quiet our laughter. The knocking came persistently now. “Hello? You know we aren’t supposed to lock the—”  
  
The door swung open to reveal Emily. She stared, awestruck, her hair frazzled and uniform tie unknotted. Over her shoulder I spotted a pile of textbooks tossed onto her bed. She looked like she had spent the last straight week in the library and it only made our costumes all the more obvious.  
  
Swallowing, I tried to appear nonchalant, but the fact that I was wearing makeup for the first time was not lost on her. She said with an uncertain glance at Marlene, “Where are you going?”  
  
“Nowhere.” I slinked past her and the audible clicking of my heeled shoes, also borrowed, was a foreign sound on the dormitory floor. Marlene followed silently, offering a tight smile in Emily’s direction.   
  
“We’re going to study,” I said pathetically.  
  
Emily’s arms were folded across her chest, her eyebrow quirked and cheeks sucked in. She looked _just_  like her mother. They had a way of making you feel like your every word was the wrong one.  
  
_“Studying.”_  
  
A wave of hot anger, as sudden as a flood; I couldn’t stop myself from snapping, “Why don’t you just mind your own business?”  
  
It wasn’t the most eloquent of comebacks, but it wasn’t in my character to defend myself, and she was stunned. I used the silence to grab Marlene’s arm and hurry from the dormitory, but Emily was hot on our heels, tailing us through the common room.  
  
When the door closed behind us, her shout cut through the corridor. “It _is_  my business!”  
  
Marlene, who was being uncharacteristically silent, signaled me to stop. Grudgingly I obliged, crossing my arms tightly and refusing to meet my cousin’s stare.   
  
Marlene shrugged defeatedly. “Look, honestly, we’re just out for a bit of fun. Nothing life-threatening, I promise.” When there was no response she added, “You should come!”  
  
I gawked at her though she was just trying to mediate. Emily was clearly uncomfortable around Marlene—a girl who drank, and broke the rules, and spent time with James Potter. She didn’t acknowledge the invitation.  
  
“Chloe, I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore,” she said. “Since when do you sneak around?”  
  
Her words stung, but I didn’t have time to retort. Maybe her words were coming from a place of jealousy, and that’s why she scoffed, “And the other night, leaving the dormitory with Sirius Black? What, are you  _sleeping_  with him?”  
  
My cheeks flared scarlet but Marlene snapped, “Oi, steady on!”  
  
“Oh, who do you think you are?” Emily turned on Marlene now.  _“I’m_  supposed to be the one looking out for her, and  _you lot_ —”  
  
“LOOKING  _OUT_  FOR ME?!” The worst burst out at a volume I had never used, splitting through the air. Though my cousin was nearly a head taller than me, it felt like I was towering above her. “You’ve never tried to look out for me—you  _abandoned_  me! And I will never forget that! So go ahead and tell the Prefects that we’re sneaking out, and I’ll tell them what  _you_  did.”  
  
I might as well have performed a petrifying spell on Emily; she froze, a look of pained guilt on her face.   
  
Marlene said gently, as if I might detonate, “C’mon, Chloe. Let’s go.”  
  
Ducking my head in embarrassment, I hurried away with the blood rushing in my ears, not certain where I was heading. With Marlene trailing close behind I imagined Emily left standing, slack-jawed, her eyes welling with fat tears.  
  
It wasn’t until after we had put several turned corners between us that Marlene said, “So…what was that?”  
  
“Nothing,” I murmured stupidly.  
  
Her hand found my wrist again, slowing me. “Chloe. Come on.”   
  
Despite my best efforts, the images resurfaced from the back of my mind, like dead fish rising in water. The painting of the mermaids swinging open; Michael’s glinting smile; the steam, smothering.  
  
_What if she tells somebody?  
  
Look at her. She won’t._  
  
“I, um… I was…” I swallowed the words back down, but they were pushing up through my throat and, between shaky breaths, they emerged. “Last year I was attacked, like Mary was, and Emily was there— _don’t,_  Marlene.”  
  
She had positively bristled and already turned on the spot, forgetting the ridiculous ball entirely, no doubt to barrel down to the Slytherin common room. But I wouldn’t release her arm.   
  
“Please, I am  _begging_  you, don’t. McGonagall already knows, and all I want is to forget that it ever happened. And I know that you can’t understand that, because you’re a fighter, but… this isn’t your battle.”  
  
Clearly Marlene wanted to argue. I could see her pulse hammering in the dip in her throat. But she must have believed me, because she pulled me into a long embrace. Her voice was muffled by my hair, “Fine. But you’re wrong, your battles  _are_  my battles.”  
  


❇

  
  
When we reached the statue of the One-Eyed Witch, my rattling nerves had not so much subsided as been redirected; whatever this Marauder’s Ball was, it was certainly enough to land us in expulsion—let alone  _jail_ —and it was about to begin.  
  
We were the last to arrive. The group stood carelessly in the middle of the corridor, despite the fact that they were dressed for an evening out. But of course they knew they were safe: the map was open in Remus’s hands. His hair was coiffed to show more of his handsome, albeit scarred, face.  
  
As we neared, James called in his posh voice, “About time, ladies!” To fit the role, he wore a smart tweed jacket; an unlit pipe was between his teeth.  
  
“Come off it, we’re not that late.” Marlene cast me a corroborating glance. “We couldn’t find a way to sneak out of Hufflepuff.”  
  
“Well, we all aren’t Ravenclaws for a reason,” conceded Mary, her short golden dress glimmering by some enchantment. I felt Marlene’s stare slide from Mary to me, and ignored it.  
  
Beside James, Lily stood touching the place where her Head Girl badge would have been, had she not been wearing a fashionable dress. My face must have betrayed my thoughts because she suddenly wailed, “I  _know,_  I’m a  _terrible_  Head Girl, leave it be!”  
  
“Oh…” I began, but realized that Peter, in a vastly oversized jacket, was staring at me as if I were a unicorn. It suddenly became apparent that everyone was watching us.  
  
Peter garbled, “Chloe, you, erm.”  
  
The silence stretched painfully, ending only with the slap of James’s hand on Peter’s back. “Well said, mate. Brilliant work.”  
  
I was grateful for Sirius’s impatient cry: “Let’s go already! We have a long walk.” His hair contained even more product than usual, swept back from his face. I had the impression that they had all borrowed James’s pomade and spent hours in front of a mirror together.  
  
“Fussy, are we?” Remus grinned, but he stood and extracted a small brown bag from his jacket pocket.   
  
With this smallest of movements the air around us seemed to change, crackling with excitement and the knowledge that we were about to do something against the rules. He pulled out an unwrapped bar of chocolate, breaking off a piece before handing the bag to Mary. It wasn’t until it was already in my hand that I realized the chocolate contained the Pasithea mushrooms.  
  
James was working his shoulders like a boxer about to enter the ring. The clenching of my jaw was in rhythm to Sirius’s words from the other night, repeating in my mind:  _Oh, that’s right, trouble_ …  
  
“Bottoms up,” said Marlene. I broke off a bit with my teeth, glancing across the circle to Sirius as he licked the chocolate off his fingers.  
  


❇

  
  
The shouts and wandlight ricocheted off the walls of the tunnel; we had started walking but soon something took over us and we were running, multiplied by our hundred shadows. Lily’s red hair whipped from her face, and I stared in awe as her tresses grew longer and longer, until she was miles ahead of the ends that hung in the air.  
  
Then suddenly we were there, wherever  _there_  was—a trap door overhead was pushed open, and we were climbing out of the tunnel and into a drafty room. The smell of licorice filled my senses and I may have never realized exactly where we were, if Mary hadn’t said, dreamily, “Oh, brilliant, I could really go for some sweets.”  
  
_The basement of Honeydukes,_  I thought, and wondering how or why we were here seemed very unimportant. All around us, the shelves were stacked high; they seemed to go forever, rising into the darkened ceiling but never to meet it.  
  
“Cauldron Cake?” Peter offered from very close beside me.  
  
“My favorite,” I said, suddenly ravenous, and greatly unconcerned that we were stealing.  
  
Peter smiled serenely. “I know.”  
  
And I smiled back at him, remembering that he was the one who had invited me, and now it didn’t seem so terrible—Lily with James, Mary with Remus, Marlene with Sirius. Maybe there was no attraction but it just made _such_  perfect sense, the symmetry of our even numbers.  
  
“Better load up,” said Sirius, who wore a look of concentration, as if he were reading small print. He began piling sweets into the pockets of his dragonskin jacket.  
  
“Keep it together, Padfoot!” Lily used a strange name. Her green eyes were more vibrant than usual as she turned them on James, unable to hide her slow smile, now that they were what they were. Then everyone was huddling together, touching hands and arms and shoulders, as Lily was saying “Don’t you dare let go,” and  _“Please, Merlin, don’t let me Splinch them.”_  
  
When we Apparated it felt like somebody was rolling my lungs up like a tube of toothpaste, squeezing all of the air out. I had only Apparated once before, with my uncle—where did we go, in that blackness? When we reemerged, it was the sounds that first crept into my conscience: murmuring voices, far-away music, the shuffling of a crowd. I shivered. We were somewhere in a dark alleyway that smelled faintly of rubbish.  
  
“London, you look  _ravishing!”_  Sirius was at the mouth of the alleyway, silhouetted by the orange glow of lampposts, his arms spread wide.  
  
_London!_  
  
My eyes met with Marlene’s, nearly black with the dilation of her pupils, but then we were rushing off once more on the seemingly endless excursion to nowhere. We followed Sirius like a beacon. He lit a cigarette with his wand—a small part of me gaped at his using magic—but the throngs of passers-by seemed not to notice. Movement from above caught my eye: someone was flying overhead on a broomstick, and my heart leapt, because we were in the real world of magical London, the last place my parents would have wanted me to be.   
  
Someone was gently taking me by the shoulder—Remus. I had walked straight past the open door, wedged between two shops, where the others disappeared. Grainy electric music was barreling onto the streets. From outside it looked like Pandora’s box. I followed Remus through the door, where the sounds of bass pummeled my ears; candy-colored lights refracted like stars, and they could have been moving, or I could have willed it; the air was warm with the heat of the crowd. From the stage, a band of leather-clad boys were playing some sort of punk music that I would never be cool enough to know, but in that moment, I felt different. Like a girl who lived in London, and came to shows on the weekends, and tasted like cigarettes and the lips of lovers.  
  
“Like it?” Remus shouted over the feedback from the amps.  
  
We had barely spoken, just the two of us, but some sort of change had taken place only hours ago and I felt ingrained in their world. Maybe it would wash away in the morning. I must have been nodding as fiercely as imagined, because Remus was smiling hugely, and then Mary appeared to pull him further into the throngs. Behind them Lily had slung an arm around James’s neck, laughing at something he said.  
  
I stood, slack-jawed and smiling, at the play unfolding before me, feeling fuller than I ever had. Someone was taking my hands: Marlene, leading me into the sea of people, where Peter and Sirius waited. We were all here. Overdressed, underage, but  _here._  
  
Marlene’s arms wound through the air as she danced, her eyes closed, as carefree as if she were alone. I felt in that moment such complete adoration for her, and everything that she was, and I didn’t realize I was staring until she took my hands, braiding them through mine. Everywhere that our skin touched seemed to be made of stars. It was actually glimmering.  
  
“Do you see that?” I asked.  
  
Marlene shook her head, laughing, “It’s all you, Chloe.”  
  
She turned to face Sirius, joining her hands with his now, and he twirled her around and around until I was sure she would disappear. At last she stumbled, leaning back against his chest for stability as she laughed.   
  
And then I watched through the kaleidoscope of lights as Sirius leaned over her shoulder, turning her face towards him, and kissed her on the mouth. And somehow in the moment it was right; it was supposed to happen and so it did. Maybe tomorrow I would play the scene hundreds of times until it burned inside my chest, but not tonight.  
  
Marlene broke away with a smile. Sirius looked as if he had just emerged from another time and place, and when he moved to kiss her again she slipped easily away. As if it were a  _pass-it-on_  secret, she turned and, placing her hands on my shoulders, pressed her lips softly against mine. They were warm and tasted like chocolate, and when it was over Peter was staring as if he had witnessed an act of God.  
  
But all that I could say was, “That was my first kiss.”  
  
And then we were all laughing, uncontrollably, because it was so ridiculous but it was true. My eyes met with Sirius’s and there was a flicker of something less than ecstasy, as if he weren’t truly laughing. It made me uneasy, somehow.  
  
We were still smiling when there came the loud  _BOOM!,_  somehow audible over the clangor of music, and the lights flickered and went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a bit happened in this chapter! These were some of the scenes that snuck into my mind when I first began to plot this story, particularly Sirius asking Chloe for mushrooms, the kiss, and the confrontation with Emily--not to mention what happens in the next chapter! Please let me know what you think in a review
> 
> ♥


	11. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A realization was taking shape; I could feel its sharpness in the chilly air. They were going to find a way to fight this war, and if I remained close, I would be pulled in.

 

❇

  
  
Everything that had existed before—the taste of chocolate, the colors floating in our eyes, Marlene’s palms against mine—was suddenly gone. Was it thunder? A Muggle car accident? But somehow I knew it couldn’t be; why else would my veins have turned to lead? The music was left hanging on a jagged note of electric feedback. With one last flickering of the lights, the basement was plunged into darkness. Shrieks rose into the air.  
  
Amidst the confusion, wandlight came bobbing towards us and shone in our eyes: Lily and James. “We need to leave. Now.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Peter asked.  
  
Ignoring him, Lily searched through the crowd. More wands were casting ghostly lights across strange faces. “Remus! Mary!”  
  
“Lil, it’s probably nothing,” said Marlene gently.  
  
No sooner had she spoken than a second boom, louder this time, rattled the building once more. It was all it took. Before the dust sifting from the rafters had even touched the floor, we were all rushing towards the exit. More loud crashes, like hundreds of glasses shattering, sounded from above as we fought our way. A part of me couldn’t help but think that we were heading  _towards_  the danger.  
  
At last we broke through the door, up a short flight of stairs, and spilled onto the cobblestones. The building above us, some sort of small factory, was dark and still. But it was the only building on the whole street that had been cast in blackness.  
  
“An electrical thing, maybe?” said Marlene.  
  
“We’re in the magical district,” Remus reminded.  
  
Mary’s voice came softly, “Look… the windows.”   
  
Every single one had been shattered as if by explosion. Their glass lay flickering in the streetlight. Something was wrong; my eyes darted to meet with Marlene’s.  
  
Suddenly the large first-floor doors burst open, as if by a great storm, slamming into the brick like a clap of thunder. Gasps went up into the air. Inside was impossibly back and we all stepped away, shifting like nervous beasts ready to run.  
  
“Maybe we should leave,” I murmured pointlessly.  
  
Just then a large object catapulted from the blackness, as unceremoniously as a pile of laundry. I heard the flapping of cloth, like a sail, in the odd silence, before it landed on the cobblestones before us with a wet thud. More shrieks. Moments passed before I understood that it was a person—a body. Their face was covered in blood, indistinguishable.  
  
“GO!” James’s shout broke the silence.  
  
The crowds broke around us like a sea. I was tossed helplessly, regaining my balance just as they emerged from the darkened doorway: three figures in long black cloaks. Their faces were obscured by strange masks, like skulls, that glinted in the streetlights. They were drawing their wands…  
  
I ran. The people around me were blurs of terror, nothing more than a herd of frightened animals, each trying to outrun the other. Their shouts were deafening. In the confusion, I spotted a flash of Lily’s red hair as she sprinted ahead with James. The alleyway. We had to Apparate.  
  
I tried to keep her in sight as I ran. And then a great force, like a battery ram, crashed into me and I was thrown violently to the ground.   
  
A blast of light and I cried out—but it was only from my head hitting the cobblestones. Stunned, I vaguely registered the man who had shoved me as he picked himself up without a second glance. But then he was grabbed roughly by the collar and hurled to the ground.  
  
“Watch where you’re bloody going!” somebody shouted down at him.  
  
I tried to glimpse them through the spots. “Sirius.”  
  
But he was already pulling me to my feet. “Come on!”  
  
When we at last reached the alleyway, everyone awaited with pale faces. Marlene nearly collapsed with relief. “Get  _over_  here!”  
  
Somehow, our trembling hands found one another’s. Frightened tears glazed Lily’s eyes as she shouted, “Everyone, hold on!” and with a great lurch, we were pulled into the vacuum, where the rush of blackness silenced everything.  
  
The Shrieking Shack, in the moments before our arrival, must have been ghostly silent. Dust-ridden. Cobwebbed. But in the blink of an eye, the figures of eight battered students appeared, their gasps for air breaking the silence. We staggered apart, falling to the raw wooden floors or clutching one another.  
  
Lily pressed her hands to her forehead, on the verge of sobs. “Is everyone okay?”  
  
In response, James, with his face set in a graveness I had never seen, crossed over to her. Without a second thought he took her face in his hands and kissed her, hard. As I looked away in a distant feeling of embarrassment, he took her firmly in his embrace.  
  
“That was awful back there,” Lily said, voice muffled by James’s shoulder.   
  
Nobody else could speak. A grim silence had settled over us. Mary’s face was screwed up tightly, buried in her shoulder to hide the tears; Marlene wrapped an arm tightly around her friend. A white-faced Remus and Peter offered silent nods that they were unharmed, but seemed incapable of much else. Only Sirius stood alone, gazing darkly at the floor.  
  
Marlene suddenly gasped, “Chloe, you’re hurt!”  
  
It must have been the adrenaline that kept the pain at bay. When I pulled my hand from my forehead, my fingers were slick with blood.   
  
Lily cried, “Oh my God, I Splinched you!”  
  
“No, I just fell back in the crowds. I’m alright.” My eyes darted to Sirius, but he remained glowering at the floorboards.  
  
Remus sat near his sullen friend’s feet, elbows resting on drawn knees, though the color hadn’t quite returned to his face. “D’you reckon that was him?”  
  
Peter’s voice was shaky. “Who?”  
  
“Voldemort.”  
  
The name was mostly unspoken; given odd little nicknames as if it somehow made him less terrible. To hear it—to think that person could have been there, standing before us—brought the bile into my throat.  
  
But James shook his head. “I don’t reckon he’d put himself in the position to be caught. If there had been any Aurors around, or someone had  _done_  something—”  
  
At this, Sirius suddenly released a growl so animalistic that I jumped. Spinning on his foot, for a moment it appeared he would punch the threadbare walls. But his fist only dropped helplessly back to his side. Marlene watched him with a knit brow, her free arm still comforting Mary, and I wondered how all of her empathy could fit inside one person.  
  
“They were his followers, though,” she said. “Did you see the mark?”  
  
Lily frowned. “Mark?”  
  
“In the sky. Those men performed some kind of spell and then there was this huge, green skull and snake above the building. It was spotted at the Goblin murders, too.”  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Remus breathed. “It’s really happening.”  
  
It was. My eyes dropped down to my feet; I couldn’t bear to look at the others. It felt like somebody had taken the marrow from my bones.   
  
At last James nodded decisively. “We should get back, then.”  
  
But nobody moved, and it said everything we couldn’t. That leaving the Shrieking Shack now would force us to face reality: that there were people in the world who wanted to hurt us. To kill us. That a war was beginning and we were just children.  
  
“The news is going to get out,” Peter said. “What do we tell everyone?”  
  
Nobody had an answer for that.  


 

❇

  
  
The walk back was endless and a blur all at once—a series of disjointed images. The tunnel leading from the shack. Crawling on hands and knees from beneath an eerily still Whomping Willow, onto the snowy grounds. The hidden door below the owlry.  
  
We found ourselves at last standing in a circle, at the base of the swinging staircases, unspeaking. Though Remus held the map he only glanced at it half-heartedly, as if being caught carried no weight. Not after tonight.  
  
Marlene broke the silence. “Chloe needs to get back to Hufflepuff.”  
  
“I’ll be okay,” I said. But the thought of my shoes clicking down the empty corridors sent a tremble through me.  
  
“I am  _not_  letting you walk there by yourself.”  
  
Sirius’s voice came for the first time since leaving London, “I’ll take her.”  
  
She gave him a long look, as if verging on an offer to accompany us, but only nodded. Still, I knew that she would wait in the Gryffindor common room until he had returned safely.  
  
Marlene hugged me tightly and I felt my eyes pinprick with tears, but blinked against the sensation. “I’m glad you’re okay.”  
  
“Okay” was a strange word to describe it, but I nodded. “You too.” And with a last half-hearted glance around the circle, we departed.  
  
The castle seemed foreign, as if we had been gone for much longer. An open mouth, poised in stillness, its only sounds were the fires from the torches. As we passed, they whooshed with the slightest breeze, sounding exactly like the scene earlier: the split-second that the body sailed through the air, cloak flapping.  
  
“We should have done something.”   
  
I nearly jumped. Somehow, impossibly, we had reached the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room. “What?”  
  
Sirius’s face remained as dark as when we had arrived in the Shrieking Shack. There was a large rip in his dragonskin jacket, along the seam of its collar. “We should have helped.”  
  
I couldn’t imagine having done anything but what we did: run. Every fiber in my body had told me to.   
  
He shook his head in irritation. “We don’t even know how to fight them!”  
  
_“Fight_  them?” I echoed in disbelief. “Sirius, what could we have done? We’re  _kids.”_  
  
He shot me a look, and I understood the flimsiness of the excuse. We weren’t too young to take hallucinogens, or to break out of school grounds, or to travel to another country.  
  
His gaze flicked up to my bloodied forehead. “You should put something on that.”  
  
It would be swollen, surely, and others would ask how it had happened. But none of that seemed to matter right now. Sirius ran a hand through his tangled hair, taking a step back.   
  
“See you tomorrow.”  
  
Tomorrow. So the world would just continue on as it had been. “Will you be…okay?” I asked, feeling stupid somehow, after everything.  
  
“I could use the walk.”  
  
I nodded, but Sirius had already turned away.   
  
Later, in my four-poster, with a salve of honey and chamomile on my forehead, I imagined him returning to the Gryffindor common room. Would Marlene have rose solemnly to her feet? Did he kiss her again?  
  
Swallowing, I turned onto my side, staring at the barely visible wall. But sleep wouldn't come. I kept replaying the image of the body landing on the cobblestones; the horrible wet thump. Each time it landed closer and closer to my feet, until I was standing in blood.  


 

❇

  
  
I didn’t speak to Marlene or her friends for the next week. During meals and lessons I could feel her long, imploring looks from across the room, but she conceded to give me space. I wasn’t certain if the others even noticed my distance. Winter holiday was fast approaching, the days full of welcome distractions. Studying for end-of-term exams took up the most of my time, and I rarely left the fire lit common room save for classes, or to visit the library.  
  
Late the next Sunday evening, I sat cross-legged on my bed, amidst a sea of heavy books and empty teacups. I had scarcely left the position all weekend, leaving me with a crick in my neck and a hungry stomach.   
  
As I rubbed my neck, a scratching came at the window; a sleek brown owl was perched on its ledge. With a gust of cold wind, I opened the window and the bird dropped a parcel into my waiting hand. Alighting on the end of my bed, the owl shook its feathers, seeming grateful for the warmth.   
  
I unwrapped the brown paper parcel to reveal a bar of my favorite Honeyduke’s chocolate and hazelnuts. There was a note, in Marlene’s handwriting, as well.  


  _Just chocolate this time, I promise.  
_ _Let me know how you are? xo_

  
My stomach rumbled. I had scarcely eaten a full meal since the events in London. Whether this was due to a busy schedule or the creeping nausea that hung over me like a fog, I couldn’t say.   
  
Maybe it was wrong to abandon her after such a terrible night. But being around all of them together made it worse. I had even been avoiding mirrors, where the cut on my forehead was not quite healed: a physical reminder that it had been very, terribly real.  
  
The news of the attack had broken quickly—the morning after—but I had refused to pay attention. The hushed murmurs of students were blotted out, and I told myself their grim faces were from exams stress. Like my mother, when the world became too dark around me, I simply feigned ignorance.  
  
Shaking myself from the creeping thoughts, I broke off a piece of the chocolate, and scribbled a quick lie on the back of Marlene’s note:  _I’m alright, thank you. See you soon._  With the letter clutched in the owl’s talons, I opened the window once more, and watched it disappear into the darkness.  


 

❇

  
  
But by the next morning, I could ignore it no longer. As I took meager bites of toast, under the chilly morning light of the Great Hall, I glanced up to the person sitting across from me. And there it was, emblazoned on the front page of their newspaper:  _LONDON ATTACK VICTIM IDENTIFIED AS REYNARD DURAND._  
  
My toast dropped onto the plate. Reynard Durand, the Muggle and non-Pureblood activist who was attacked in Hyde Park during the previous year—it was his impossibly bloodied face that I had stared into.  
  
I thought of Marlene’s reaction that day, last spring, upon hearing the news of the first attack. How visceral it had felt; how inconsolable she had been all afternoon. And the other night, outside the Hufflepuff basement, with Sirius: his anger that we hadn’t done anything to stop the attackers.   
  
They were so brave, and so passionate, and so eager to help. A burning shame that I did not share in this belief, at all, was spreading throughout me. All I felt was nauseating fear: for them, for myself, for my family.  
  
Across the Great Hall, the crimson and gold banners of their house seemed to be glaring. Marlene and the others hadn’t yet arrived, but even without them a realization was taking shape. I could feel its sharpness in the chilly air. They were going to find a way to fight this war, and if I remained close, I would be pulled in.  
  
I shivered, a feeble lamb amongst lions.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: A shorter chapter, but definitely a heavier one, too. It's becoming clearer and clearer that Chloe has surrounded herself with people much more brave and ambitious than herself. Their time at Hogwarts is nearing an end, meaning she'll have to decide whether or nto she wants to be truly ingrained in this world of the First Order.
> 
> Please leave a review ♥


	12. Chapter Eleven

 

❇

  
  
The wrapping paper was glossy beneath my hands, a garish red-and-green plaid, and as my parents looked down upon me it  _almost_ worked. It almost felt like life had continued normally. And perhaps, if I hadn’t been standing before the body of a murdered man only weeks ago, I would have truly believed it.  
  
But this year the holidays felt synthetic; brittle, like the icicles hanging from our roof. My mouth was coated with the syrup of prepackaged hot chocolate, the marshmallows that looked like baby teeth. Strings of plastic fairy lights blinked with factory-made precision. Even the carols that drifted from our record player—the same that had played for the last seventeen Christmases—sounded wrong.  
  
“Well, go on!”   
  
I forced a smile where I knelt beside the tree. It was a spruce, cut from our farm, and the only thing in the room that felt alive. “Alright.”  
  
The paper tore easily. Usually I tried to savor the moment, for my own anticipation as much as theirs—our pile of gifts was never large, each one something special. But this year, I only wanted to quickly thank them for whatever book I was surely given, and be excused to bury myself in its pages.  
  
Instead, the cardboard box displayed a picture of a girl smiling into a plastic receiver, her eyes twinkling as if she knew something I didn’t.  
  
Mustering my excitement, I tried, “A telephone!”  
  
My mother clasped her hands. “Oh, we were hoping you’d like it! They’re saying all young girls should have one now. Emily’s got one too, you know.”  
  
“Thank you.” But I would never have reason to use such a thing. “It—it won’t work at Hogwarts, because of the magic, but I can use it when I come home to visit!”  
  
Their looks of elation flickered like the lights on the tree and my father said, carefully, “That brings us to your other gift. Your mother and I found a local contractor to help with the planning, but... we’re converting the old storage room above the garage.”  
  
“Into what?”  
  
“Your own place!” My mother’s voice was shrill.  
  
My hands felt like lead. Here it was, now, the idea we had skirted around for years: that I would have to choose between my life and theirs.   
  
My father said, “It makes the most sense for us, financially. We just can’t afford to rent you a flat right now. It’s only temporary.”  
  
“Well, maybe not  _temporary,”_  my mother added. “We can talk about that.”  
  
Where was this coming from? When had my leaving home become a possibility, and not something inevitable? I felt like a child, looking up at them in their age-old power play. It had always been two against one.   
  
My father was always the mediator. “Of course you’ll have your own schedule, and can come and go as you please. But you’ll be able to save money by working for us until you can afford uni.”   
  
“Uni!” I breathed.  
  
“Or horticulture school, or whatever you decide to do!”  
  
There wasn’t even a  _discussion._  They had decided for me, and it became nauseatingly apparent that entire  _years_  of my life had been aligning for this very moment. Premeditated. They had kept me working on the farm over the holidays for little to no pay, and now I had no money to call my own. I was trapped.  
  
My fingers dug into the cardboard box. “But I want to go to  _Herbology school._  I want to keep learning magic. And they have dormitories, I wouldn’t need a flat.”  
  
Sensing my anger, my mother said in a voice usually reserved for children, “Darling, you’ll be able to do all the same things in horticulture school, and you’ll be  _safer._  We’ve been reading that awful newspaper of yours. We know what’s happening, and with that family of…of…”  
  
“Goblins. They were  _Goblins,_  Mum, you can say it.”  
  
She settled into a displeased stillness and my father said, “We’re sorry, but your safety is what’s most important.”  
  
“Safety!” A laugh burst from me, hard and bitter. “You think that hiding in a Muggle university is going to keep me  _safe?”_  
  
“Well, yes! There are resources, and protection by the law—”  
  
“Oh, please. You have no idea what this man Voldemort is capable of. He could appear right here, in this room, and we'd all be dead.” I snapped my fingers.  _“Instantaneously._ And there’s nothing that a locked door, or a handgun, or a  _bloody Muggle university_  could do—”  
  
“Chloe, that’s enough!” my mother wailed, her eyes suddenly full of tears. “I can’t bear it!”  
  
The sight of my mother crying was enough to silence me. Guilt contstricted my throat and pinpricked in my own eyes. But still, a part of me was familiar with this tactic of hers. My father had gone quite still, part two of the trick: I had upset her and disappointed him.  
  
“Oh, Mum.” I rose to place her in a limp hug.  
  
“I don’t know what we’d do if something happened to you,” she sniffled.  
  
It felt like I was wading through a pool of guilt—one that had risen to my chest—and I knew that the anger was at its bottom, somewhere, in the deepest parts. Unreachable. Was it really so important that I leave them now, during such tumultuous times? I was their only child. And herbology school would still be there, when things calmed down…  
  
I swallowed hard, saying the words I least wanted. “I’ll… figure something else out.”  
  
My father nodded his head in stoic approval; I had made the right decision.  _Their_  right decision. And though the sleeve of my jumper was wet with my mother’s tears, her cries stopped as soon as I’d said the words.

 

 

 

❇

  
  
  
Later, after picking at an overwhelming breakfast of sausages and pancakes, I retreated to my bedroom. Just as predicted, my parents had also gifted me a book: _Jane Eyre_. It was one I surely would have read by now had I attended a Muggle school. The message was unsubtle. But the story had always intrigued me, and so I focused on this as I closed the bedroom door quietly behind me. There had never been a lock.  
  
But something stopped me and I stood at my writing desk, a mammoth in the corner. I chewed on my finger, staring at the top drawer, until at last I pulled it open. The letter rested atop a stack of old post. I had re-sealed it in a new envelope as a sort of gift. Now, though, I was grateful that I had not to placed it under the tree.  
  
The wax seal broke with a quiet  _pop._  Sinking onto my bed I unfolded the familiar parchment, already creased from a dozen reads. It bore a crest of two laurel wreaths surrounding a large letter “E,” and a banner beneath it which read,  _Floreat Scientia._  “Let knowledge flourish.” I had looked up the meaning in the Hogwarts library, bursting with a giddiness that was no longer there.   
  
The letter was hand-written in a neat script:  
  
_Chloe Fairchild_  
_Hufflepuff House_  
_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_  
  
_December 14, 1977_  
  
_Dear Miss Fairchild,_  
  
_It is with pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance to the Elwood Institute of Herbology, with a full academic scholarship. Please complete the attached form to accept enrollment and to confirm your housing at our Canterbury campus. Forms must be owled no later February 1st, 1978._  
  
_Sincerely,_  
  
_Matilda Rosencrantz_  
_Director of Admissions_  
  
The owl had arrived at the breakfast table during last-minute studying for my Potions exam. I hadn’t told anyone; not Professor Sprout, not even Marlene. I had wanted my parents to be the first to know.   
  
Now, though, there was no reason to tell them at all. There would be no congratulations; no tight hugs; no celebratory hot mulled wine. Swallowing, I folded the letter and neatly returned it to the envelope.  
  
_Next year,_  I thought, catching my ghostlike reflection in the window.  _Things will be better, then._  
  
But it felt like all the doors inside me were closing. 

 

❇

  
  
  
When spring arrived at Hogwarts it did so slowly and grudgingly. The snow gave way to freezing rains that lashed, for weeks, at the windows. The world outside appeared to be completely underwater. For all I cared, it could have been.  
  
The final exams of my academic career were approaching fast. But instead of studying, I spent evenings in my dormitory, reading  _Jane Eyre,_  until it wasn't just during the evening but mornings; afternoons. With the curtains of my four-poster drawn, I devoured Jane’s journey from her vicious aunt’s house, to the bleakness of Lowood School, to the darkened, ember-lit chambers of Thornfield.   
  
Skiving class was shockingly easy. As long as I hovered above academic probation, the school would not contact my parents. First, it was a Herbology lesson here and there, as I could afford it. Then I was missing entire days’ worth of lessons. But sitting through them was a bitter reminder of the life that I was preparing to leave, by no volition of my own.   
  
No easier were lessons with Marlene and the Marauders, where we tried to conjure up smiles, as if we hadn’t seen what we had. It had been months, but I still woke in the night, certain that Reynard Durand’s corpse was standing over my bed.  
  
When the nightmares didn't leave, the solution seemed obvious: I slept through the afternoons and stayed up reading most nights, with candles floating in my four-poster, and Bijou curled at my feet. With _Jane Eyre_ finished, I owled my parents for another book. Delighted, they sent  _Wuthering Heights_ and  _The Scarlet Letter._ By the time the trees were budding, I had completed what my mother called “a solid year of literature classes.”  
  
On occasion I borrowed Marlene's notes from lectures I missed. I saw her only in the classroom or in the presence of the others; never alone, never when she could ask questions. Despite my disappearance, she was determined to keep me rooted in their lives. Her notes said things in their margins like,  _Severus looks extra greasy today._ Or  _James and Sirius charmed Flitwick’s hat to dance around. Detention for a week. Idiots._  
  
One morning, at the bottom of her Transfiguration notes, there was a new set of handwriting.  _Remus took care of you-know-what._  It was Sirius’s handwriting, I finally realized. The Pasithea mushrooms had been replaced.  
  
Truthfully, I had scarcely given them thought. What did being expelled matter, now that I was destined to work on our farm until my back ached and my hands grew calloused?  
  
Still, I studied the parchment, memorizing his handwriting; the all-capital letters and hurried messiness.  
  
My new habits became a little joke within the group; that I had turned over a new leaf, that they were a bad influence on me, that I had finally decided to not be such a nerd. I smiled on cue, but all the while I thought,  _How can you have you forgotten? How is life continuing on for you this way? Did it just get better?_  
  
I remembered Lily and James, and the look on his face in the Shrieking Shack. The way Sirius had nearly punched a hole through the wall. Mary's trembling shoulders as she tried to hide her sobs. Had all of it suddenly, by some accident, become easier?

  
And perhaps that was the most surprising part of all: that one day, it just did.

One afternoon in late-April, with the unfamiliar and wonderful sensation of the sun in our eyes, Marlene and I made our way back to the castle.  I had attended a Herbology lesson, avoiding Sprout’s worried looks, breathing in the dense air that smelled of dirt and plant life.  Marlene was mid explanation that she had decided to go vegan for political reasons, when James streaked past us, pinwheeling into a seamless cartwheel.  Encouraged by Marlene's applause he tried again, but his cloak caught under his feet, and suddenly he was splayed flat on his back, his laughter echoing into the cloudless skies.

"Oh, fuck me," he wheezed, a hand to his chest, and Professor Sprout screeched, "Potter, that is _QUITE ENOUGH!"_

Nearly toppling, Marlene clutched my arm helplessly and for the first time in ages, booming laughter sprang from me, a foreign language on my lips.  A glance over my shoulder and my eyes skittered over the faces of my classmates; of Peter, Remus, Lily, Mary and Sirius.  My ribs no longer felt made of stone.  Everything that had lingered in my head for weeks seemed to be behind a pane of glass; one that the daylight was hitting in a precise way.  In that moment, I couldn’t see through to what had been weighing on me.

When we parted in the corridor, with the pleasant fuzzy-headedness of having been in the sun, Marlene said, "You know, Chloe, you _are_ a legal adult.  You don't have to live with your parents."

I furrowed my brow.  "Well, I don't exactly have the money to live on my own."

"But you already have a free ride to Elwood, don't you?  I'm just saying, how difficult could forging a Muggle university acceptance letter be?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Wow, it's been forever! But I just couldn't stop thinking about this story. And actually, the absolute final scene came to me completely randomly this week, and so I had to come back!
> 
> So here is Chloe's first true instance of rebelling against her parents, and actively choosing her magical life over the one they want for her. Also, this chapter took so long to write because I struggled with how to write the PTSD of what happened in London, and how each character is dealing with it. I would think the Marauders would put on a startlingly brave face, to the point of wondering if they were effected by it at all, and Marlene would be too concerned with taking care of others to really dwell on it.
> 
> Anyway, if you're still sticking with this story, thank you! Please let me know what you think in a review ♥


	13. Chapter Twelve

 

She is so naked and singular   
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.   
Climb her like a monument, step after step.   
She is solid.   
As for me, I am a watercolor.   
I wash off. 

— Anne Sexton, _For My Lover, Returning to his Wife_  

❇

I ran all the way to the Astronomy Tower, the light of my wand bobbing. The sun had only just set. Each passing window revealed an evening sky tinged with pink at its edges, like the rings of a coffee cup. It was a cloudless night, perfect for watching the stars, and soon I would be out of the darkened corridors and sitting with Marlene in the warm breeze. Her Astronomy marks were dreadful, she said, and this extra credit assignment would bring her above failing. I had volunteered to sit with her.

Hogwarts curfew had been moved to eight o’clock after the attacks in London and on Mary. Students had to receive special permission to visit the Astronomy Tower in the darkness, and Professor Sinistra was always nearby.

Heaving for breath, I crested the endless spiraling staircase and extinguished my wand, feeling cool air on my sweat-dampened cheeks. The roof was enchanted, like the Great Hall, and on clear nights such as this it was invisible. I craned my neck, looking into the skies where pinpricks of stars had already appeared. Beyond the waist-high walls was the infinite sweep of the mountains that bruised purple in the dimness. But it seemed that I was alone.

Then I heard Marlene’s voice, “Oh, no, I _definitely_ got your letters.”

And there they were, a stone’s throw away, silhouetted against the sky. She was peering through a telescope; Sirius’s arms were crossed so tightly that I could _feel_ his anxiousness.

“Right, reckon I was a bit, uh, eager.”

His tone always changed with her. The swagger and smugness disappeared. There was no acting. She knew an entirely different Sirius than the rest of the world.

She sounded like her usual self, amused and wry. “Seven letters in three days is eager, yeah, I'll agree with you there.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“I just thought we needed to, you know, talk. About everything that happened.”

She laughed incredulously, straightening to meet his eye. “Sirius, _nothing happened.”_

“You were there! We—I _kissed_   you!”

She threw her arms in the air. “We were on mushrooms, for Merlin’s sake! I kissed Chloe too!”

He shifted his weight uncertainly, his voice still raised. “Do you seriously not understand?”

“Understand what?”

“I  _love_ you, Marlene!” he shouted, as if by accident, and I wished I had never heard.

She was stunned into silence, if only for a moment, before a laugh burst from her. She was always laughing at him. But this time it was brittle at the edges. “Oh, please.”

Of _course_ he was in love with her; the whole world was. I remembered that day in Hogsmeade, and how I had tried to tell her how he felt, and the look on her face.

_"It's not that I don't know..."_

Her arms were crossed but she looked up at him, white-blonde hair lifting in the breeze, and it was clear: he was going to kiss her again. But when he reached out she turned her head, taking a step back.

And then suddenly he was brushing past her, his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, and before I could move he had nearly run into me where I stood in the doorway. He halted, and our eyes met for the briefest of moments. But then he pushed past me, and I heard footsteps hurrying down the spiral staircase.

The words etched themselves into my mind, over and over, as I crossed the turret. _I love you, Marlene. I love you._ When I reached her she seemed almost relieved, as if she had thought I were Sirius returning.

“Reckon you heard all that,” she said at my expression. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded.

She dropped her head back, sighing dramatically, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I don’t know what’s gotten in to him lately. Spring fever or mating season or something.”

“I think he _meant_ it.”

“Yeah, well…”  She thumbed a dial on the telescope. “I wish he didn’t.”

Anger flared in me towards her, for the first time, and it felt so foreign and wrong that I took a steadying step backwards. “Why not? Sirius is _nice_ , and he cares about you, and he’s—”

I had said too much; she was looking at me with new interest. “It doesn’t matter, let’s get to work. Have you found the first constellation?”

“Not yet…” She seemed reluctant to change the subject, but when I refused to meet her sideways glance, gave up. “You know I’m rubbish at this. Doesn’t matter, though, it’s not like I’ll be going to uni anyway.”

“What do your parents think?”

“They don’t quite get how this whole Witch thing works. I’m not sure if they even know what expectations to have.” She managed a grin. “Did your parents buy the acceptance letter?”

I nodded. I told them that I hadn’t been accepted to Herbology school; that I had reconsidered and chosen to attend my backup school. It was shocking how easily the lies came. Their suspicion had slowly—grudgingly—given way to pride. In the fall, I would move to Canterbury and attend Elwood, and Marlene would let a flat in London with Mary. Though it was childish, I was jealous of their shared life; the threadbare rug, the warm beer, the music that woke the neighbors.

And now I was jealous that Sirius’s love for her was out, hanging over me in the night air. Marlene had always been the person I wanted to be—and the person I wanted all to myself—and I had been too ashamed to admit it. But the bitter salt-sting was undeniable.

“Speaking of which…” She cast a low glance and said, “I know I haven’t told you exactly what I’ll be doing in London. But there's a sort of organization we’re going to join.”

“We?” Again, the nettling feeling. I knew nothing about this.

“Remus, James, Lily, Mary, Peter, Sirius—everyone. Even Frank and Alice. It's part of the movement. _The_ movement, fighting You-Know-Who."

My stomach dropped. “You mean like Aurors?”

“Not Aurors. These people don’t work for the government.” Was she growing impatient with me? “They call themselves the Order of the Phoenix. A bit cheesy, if you asked me, but they're actually _doing_ something.”

“So… vigilantes.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Call it what you want. We’re all going to swear in after we graduate.”

A tiny breath huffed from me. “Wow. Marlene, this is… this is _real.”_

“I know that.”

“People have died getting in that man's way. _You_ could die.”

“We were hoping you'd take the oath, too.”

I stared at her, horrified. How could she ask that of me? How could she ask that of _anyone?_   I didn’t want to fight. I had no interest in being a hero or seeing anyone else die—and this would mean walking head-on into a war.

She said, carefully, “What happened in London was…terrible. But this is an opportunity for us to actually do something about it. And if we don’t, then more people are going to die, Chloe. And they’re going to come after you, and after me, and Mary, and everyone else who isn’t a so-called ‘Pureblood.’ They’ll come after our families. And they won’t stop until everyone who isn’t like them is _gone.”_

I felt sick. Maybe I was a pacifist, or a coward, and maybe there was no difference. But I didn’t possess this savior complex; a compulsion to do “right” that the others bore on their chest like a badge. It was more shadowy than that. I tried to imagine myself holding another human at wandpoint. Who was I to decide who lived and who died?

“I just think you're being a little impulsive. There are other ways to help.”

“Oh, what, like going to Herbology school?”

It felt like I had been punched in the stomach. We had never argued before.

At my stunned silence she groaned, “Sorry, Chloe. There's a lot on my mind with exams next week, and _Sirius—”_

She stopped and I knew that I had truly said too much. Marlene knew how I felt about Sirius, and now she knew that I was a coward. What use could she possibly see in me now? A lurching rose in my chest, and I feared that I would be sick, until I realized that it was the threat of tears.

“I think I’ll go back to my dormitory,” I said, blinking hard. “I have some reading to do before tomorrow. You’ll be okay with your assignment, right?”

She nodded, but our eyes didn’t meet as we said goodbye, and as I turned and ran down the spiral staircase I was sure that the walls were constricting.

❇

The evening sun set the whole greenhouse aglow like a lightbulb. Past the frosted glass, the trees had exploded with flowers, as if overnight, and the grounds were full of students enjoying the first truly warm day of spring. Even I had dug a cotton dress from the depths of my trunk, though it did little in the stifling heat of the greenhouses.

I felt a strange disconnect from the others outside where their shouts echoed across the lake. So many of them would return to the castle in the fall, and my very last Hogwarts exam was tomorrow. It was surreal. Not for the first time, I wondered how Marlene’s exams had gone. We hadn’t spoken very much since the night on the Astronomy Tower, and while I tried to chalk it up to busyness, I knew that wasn’t the case.

In all our brief-yet-turbulent friendship I had never been upset with her.  And wasn’t most of this weight in my chest, when it came down to it, only jealousy?  Ugly and brambled jealousy?  

I waved my wand and several windows opened soundlessly.  As I lifted my hair to welcome the breeze, my eyes grazed over the familiar worktable with its terracotta pots, shears and gardening gloves, all coated in a dusting of soil.  The scene made me feel at ease and I inhaled the fresh air.  I would find Marlene after this, I decided.  It wasn’t right to not be speaking.

With my hands buried in soil I began to feel more like myself.  I never wore gloves, and liked the feel of the damp earth between my fingers.  Professor Sprout hadn't asked me to transplant the flutterby bushes, but I owed it to her, after everything.  When I had turned in my final exam, the other students scrawling on their parchments behind me, her eyes were misty.  I would miss our apprenticeship.   Now that it was springtime the plants bore their lavender-colored blooms, quivering and flitting, as if about to take flight. They were quite beautiful, really, and docile in the heat. 

The door creaked behind me and I shot to my feet as Sirius strode in.  My breath felt like a bird trapped in my chest; we hadn’t spoken since I overheard his conversation with Marlene.  His dragonskin jacket was slung over one shoulder, even though it was entirely too warm outside.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Christ, what are those things?”

I flexed my hands to keep them from trembling. “Flutterby bushes. I’m transplanting them for Professor Sprout. Do you…need something?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll help out. Reckon I owe you one, seeing as I nearly lost you this apprenticeship, got you expelled, disowned by your parents…” He meant the Pasithea mushrooms.

“You want to help me?”

“Unless you think Sprout will have my head.”

A smile, despite myself. “Not if you do a half-decent job.”

He tossed his jacket on the worktable and joined me. Sirius had never so much as mentioned my apprenticeship other than that night, when he wanted hallucinogens from me. But here we stood, over my neat rows of flutterby bushes and terra-cotta pots. I was careful to keep my distance.

Uncertainly, I kneeled, and he followed suit. I cleared my throat. “So, I’ll dig a space for the new roots, and you can just put it in.”

My cheeks were positively radiating. “The—the plants. In the soil.”

He worked his jaw, as if trying not to laugh, but nodded. “Sounds great.”

We set to work on our knees. I packed the pots with soil, leaving ample space for the root bundles, pressing my hands into the damp earth.

He broke my mortified silence. “So, how are exams going?”

“Decent enough.” I didn’t mention that, despite my absences, I was doing quite well. “What about you?”

“Terrible, actually. Reckon I won’t be heading straight into the Ministry after graduation.”

“Well, then you’d be making your mother happy, so unless you _want_   to give her a heart attack…”

His laughter filled the greenhouse. “In that case, maybe I should consider Ministry work.”

He pushed his hair from his eyes again. I proffered a black hairband, and he messily pulled back his locks, saying, “I’m just ready to be done with this place. We’re looking for a flat in London, Remus and Peter and me. James and Lily are already moving in together—”

“Really!”

“Yeah, reckon they’re getting pretty serious.”

“They’ve been together for a while now. Six months?”

“Not counting James’s seven-year mating ritual.” He furrowed his brow, struggling with a particularly fluttery bush. Its leaves rustled in what would be anger, if a plant could feel such a thing, as he set it into the new soil. We both pressed the dirt down.

I smiled at the thought of Lily and James's shared flat; her many potted plants and his shoe collection. “They’ve been a long time coming.”

As I said it, our fingers touched in the soil, and I sat back quickly. “It’ll work best if only one of us does this part.”

Clearly, he didn’t believe me, but gave a placating nod. As he passed me another bushel he asked, “What’ll you do after graduation?”

“I’m going to Herbology school, actually.” I bit back a smile. “My parents think I’m going to Muggle uni, but I forged the documents, so…”

He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “Wow, we really _have_   been a bad influence on you! I’m impressed!”

“Well, it was either that or go back home, so the choice was fairly obvious.”

“I would _kill_   myself if I had to go back home.”

So, he still called it his home, even after everything they had done to him. I glanced at the threadbare tee-shirt stretched across his shoulders, so holey that the collar was nearly separating in places. Every little thing that he did was to further separate himself from his family.

“Everyone is heading to London, it sounds like.”  Despite my attempts, sadness tinged my voice.

“Ah, don’t fret, you’ll come visit. You and Marlene—”

He stopped and there was silence.

I bit my lip. “About Marlene…”

“Yeah.”

I sat back, my soiled hands resting on my knees. No doubt we were quite the picture: me with my rodlike posture and Sirius, who could sprawl comfortably in a phone booth. My eyes couldn't meet his, so I said to my dirty hands, “I just wanted you to know that—that I didn’t mean to hear what you said to her, about... you know. It should have been private.”

Maybe he was waiting for me to say something else, so I sputtered, “I’m sorry.”

“Christ, Chloe, you don’t have to be sorry. Marlene is…”

I shrugged with a helpless smile. “She’s Marlene.”

He laughed. “Yeah, she is.”

“I really don’t think she meant any harm. She just doesn’t seem to want what other people want.”

Too late I realized my mistake. I turned quickly to the blurred windows, but he was already piecing it together. “And what do these _other people_ want?”

My hands gripped my knees as I glanced at the hair falling from its tie, curving in toward his jaw. The short distance between us was electric; I distinctly saw him glance at my lips.

And damn Marlene, because even though I knew that she didn’t love Sirius, I said, “I didn’t mean me.”

He raised his eyebrows as if taken off-guards. My words stung; somehow, I had wounded _his_ pride. With that he rose to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers as if nothing had happened at all.

“Well, thanks for the Herbology lesson.”

I nodded mutely.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

I shut my eyes to hear his footsteps crossing over the stone floor. There was a creak as the door opened, and then it closed—because why wouldn’t it? Why would he have turned back? All was silent and I was left alone, by my own doing, again.

God damn it.

I punched my fist into the dirt, working faster and faster, as if I could bury my thoughts in the soil. _Like you always do, Chloe._

It was only moments before I noticed the dragonskin jacket on the table. Sirius couldn’t be far. I leapt to my feet, folding the jacket into a neat square.  When he threw the door open I stopped short. “Oh!”

But something in his face had changed. And before I could place what it was, his lips were crashing into mine, all at once, like an ember on my tongue. Sirius drove me backwards until I bumped clumsily against the wall.

Kissing, and the mechanics of it, was foreign to me. But Sirius kissed me hard; with his jaw; with his tongue.  I allowed myself fall into the current.  His hands pulled my waist into his like an archer pulling a bowstring. And then, abruptly, they moved between my thighs and pressed against a place that sent bolts of lightning through me.

I broke away, moon eyed. But Sirius must have heard the eagerness in my shaky breath. Slowly, through a half-lidded gaze, he cinched my skirt as if lifting a curtain. Inch by inch it rose above my knee. His fingertips grazed the skin over my hipbone, over the unseen scar, tugging my knickers. And then those same fingers traveled between my thighs, further and further, until at last they found what they sought.

Hungrily I kissed him, but Sirius broke away, murmuring, “Look at me, Chloe.”

And I dug my fingers into his arms, I thought, of course Sirius Black needed validation. Even now. Even with his fingers inside me he needed proof that my very core was becoming molten. That he was wonderful; that he could render me all knee-trembled and lip-bitten; that Marlene was mistaken in rejecting him.

With his forehead pressed to mine we shared the same heaving breath until I couldn’t stop the fluttering of my eyelids, or the tension in my muscles, and a shower of sparks burst and coursed through every inch of me. Sirius’s lips bruised mine once more as I quaked, clutching a nearby shelf.

With my head craned backwards I stared through the glass roof, drawing in gasps of heavy air. Sirius placed a kiss on my neck, the corner of my mouth, my ear. And then his stifling heat disappeared as he stepped away. His white shirt was wrinkled, stained with potting soil from my hands.

I swallowed, my breath steadying. “I’ve never…”

He grabbed his leather jacket from the floor and his look said, plainly, _I know._

As I self-consciously tugged my knickers back up, a thought struck me. “Don’t tell Marlene.”

“Of course not,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

With a pause he reached over to kiss my cheek. We could have been acquaintances departing after tea. Taking two slow steps backward, he seemed to remember it all over again, and a grin spread over his face. With an incredulous shake of his head, he said, “See you around.”

And he left once more.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

❇

 

The wedding fell on a rainy Saturday afternoon in April.  Beneath the awning of an empty apothecary, I looked across the narrow street at a woman hurrying through the downpour.  James’s childhood home was an unassuming brick two-story.  To anyone else it appeared dark and empty.  But as I watched, the woman murmured a password, passing through the closed gate like a ghost.  It was a complicated invisibility spell cast by Albus Dumbledore himself.

I pulled my trench coat tighter, waiting as more members of the Order arrived, minutes apart as to not raise suspicion.  Just as instructed.  This was supposed to be a joyous occasion, I thought, stiffening as Alastor Moody stalked down the slickened cobblestones.  I pressed my back against the locked door, hiding from his suspicious glance, until he passed through the gate as well.

I knew he didn’t want me there.

Despite Marlene’s imploring, I had yet to join the Order of the Phoenix.  I was there if needed in small ways: Polyjuice for missions I wasn’t allowed to understand, healing tonics for the wounded, Veritaserum in case they took a hostage.  I didn’t like to think about the last one.

Events such as this wedding, cloaked in secrecy, were for family and trusted individuals only.  To Alastor Moody I was neither.  But Lily and James had put their foot down, and I was “Of course invited to their wedding, don’t be mental.”  It was a small consolation after nearly a year of separation from their group.  Marlene and I had remained in touch, me visiting her flat on the weekends or vice-versa, but the visits became fewer and fewer.

“Chloe?”

Peter was behind me, standing under an umbrella and looking surprised.  He had finally grown into his ears and stood a little straighter.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” the words flew from my mouth. 

“I’m glad you’re here too.”  Peter still flushed like he used to, but his eyes stayed trained on my face.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it.  But it was true; he had been the only person to understand my refusal to join the Order of the Phoenix, all those months ago.  The others pretended—Lily and Marlene especially—but I knew what was thought of me.

Coward.

“Ready, then?” 

“Sure.”  With a grateful smile I ducked beneath the umbrella.  We were instructed to use them rather than rain-repellant charms; to arrive via the designated Portkey; to keep our heads down.

“Reckon Moody will kill us for arriving in twos?” I murmured, and Peter grinned.

“Constant vigilance.”

We reached the wrought iron gate and shared a glance, before intoning, _“Amor luminaria in tenebris.”_ Love lights up the darkness.  We were told to memorize it, burn the parchment, and to share it with no one.  It made me think that love wasn’t doing much of anything these days.

But when we passed through the gate my throat constricted with joy.  It was like entering another world.  The sun was out by enchantment, drenching the garden in a late-afternoon glow and catching in the droplets falling from the now-useless umbrella.  Bright swing music played from a gramophone.  But most of all it was the people.  Overcoats were discarded, and they dressed in their finest clothes, chatting happily with champagne in hand.  It had been so long since I’d seen this many smiling faces. 

Mr. Potter, the spitting image of James himself, passed out bubbly.  His face was aglow with pride.  When he reached us, he clapped a firm hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“Wonderful to see you, Peter.  Is this your date?”

He glanced at me sideways and sputtered, “Oh, well, erm…”

“Chloe Fairchild,” I interjected.  “Congratulations.”

We shook hands, his grip firm and warm, before he continued along his way.  Peter and I shared an embarrassed smile over our champagne flutes.  But then I heard a familiar voice and my heart leapt into my throat. 

 _“There_ you are, it’s about bloody time!”

Marlene looked otherworldly.  With a crown of flowers woven through her hair, the long cape sleeves of her lavender dress lifted in her wake.  Before I could speak I was crushing her in a hug.  “Whoa!” she laughed, returning the embrace.  It had been months since I had seen her.

“I missed you.”  Again, I felt the embarrassing threat of happy tears. 

Marlene held me at arm’s length, saying, “Herbology school suits you well.  I love this.”  She tugged on my new chin-length hair.  “Very _collegiate.”_

“My Mum asked if I was turning into a ‘modern woman.’”  She had meant if I were a lesbian.

“Come on, she should know you’re knee-deep in uni boys!”  It wasn’t true, but I laughed anyway, and then the sunlight of her attention was turned to Peter.  “Oi Petey, how’s it going?  You look _fancy!_ ”

She pulled him stumbling into a crushing hug.  It felt just like it used to, at Hogwarts.  I couldn’t believe that the cold and granite world existed outside the Potters’ garden.  I never wanted to leave.

She touched my arm, saying quietly, just for me, “We’ll catch up.  Find me later.  But right now, I’d better go make sure Lily doesn’t bolt.  Maid of honor and all.”  With a wink, she disappeared.

I was staring after her when Peter asked, “Wanna go find the others?  I’m sure they’ve broken into the cigars by now.”

I knew who he meant.  Despite my desire to see Remus and James, I said, “Go ahead.  I need to wash up.”

It was a flimsy excuse, but he nodded.  “Wish me luck.”

I smiled.  Of course he was nervous to be a groomsman, even if it only meant standing before thirty people.  “You’ll do great.”

He paused, and I had the distinct impression that were he braver, he would have leaned in to kiss my cheek.  I didn’t know how that made me feel.  But Peter only offered a quiet, “See you,” and disappeared around the side of the house, into the back garden, where I could smell the faint hint of cigar smoke.  The world seemed to slow around me.

 _He_ would be there, I knew, smoking a cigarette.  I could hear the quiet breath and see the curling of the smoke, dangerous and reckless.  The dragonskin jacket.  Every teenage girl’s dream.

But I wasn’t a girl anymore; not really.

I looked around the garden, hugging myself.  Frank and Alice, the only other guests I would know, had not yet arrived.  Mary was surely upstairs with Lily and Marlene.  I wished, not for the first time, that I had a date to bring—but my time at Elwood had been fruitless.  There was a clumsy, stumbling kiss, from a bespectacled boy at a cramped party, but I never learned his name or saw him again.

With a last glance around the unfamiliar faces, I ducked inside the house.

From the kitchen came a flurry of voices: Mrs. Potter and some other witches, along with a house elf, were using magic to cover a giant cake in fresh daisies.  A sour-looking girl stood in the corner, arms knotted tightly, and it was a moment before I recognized her as Lily’s sister.  Despite their rocky relationship, a photo of Petunia was spell-o-taped to the wall of Lily and James’s flat.

I smiled when we made eye contact.  “Washroom?”

But she looked away, and Mrs. Potter answered politely, “Just upstairs, dear.”

I nodded a thank you, glancing again at Petunia, who was pulling the petals off a daisy.

The rest of the house was surprisingly quiet as I passed through.  The den was brimming with brass knickknacks, ornate lamps, and decorative pillows.  A bookshelf was stuffed with books and dozens of board games.  But the clutter felt intentional; it was a cheery and lived-in room.  Every available surface held a family photograph.  Most of them were magical, and their subjects smiled and waved at me.

It was so different from my own family home.  Bare-bones and utilitarian, the farmhouse—its stone floors and white walls—was subtly uninviting, like an old painting.  A study in quiet light.

❇

 

In the bathroom mirror, I stared at my reflection, wondering how I must look to my friends now.  My face was bare, like it had been at Hogwarts.  Makeup continued to mystify me more than any Arithmancy class ever had.  My mother had hated my short hair, preferring the stick-straight sheet that hung past my shoulders since childhood.  She had felt betrayed, somehow.  I ruffled the straight-across fringe, damp with raindrops, and thought that this was the least of my betrayals to her.

Was this evidenced in my face?  Did the lying age me, etching fine creases into the skin?  I felt older than the amount of time that had passed—less prone to fits of delusional romance. 

It had been almost one year since I last saw Sirius Black.

After what happened in the Hogwarts greenhouses, we had scarcely spoken, and each brief encounter left my hands trembling.  His gaze had scarcely landed on me; it was as if I wasn’t even in the room.  But I hadn’t been able to do the same, during those last weeks of our Seventh Year.  Behind every blink was the split-second impact of his lips crushing mine, demanding attention. 

 _Look at me, Chloe_.

For our final night at Hogwarts, our group spent a blurry evening at the Three Broomsticks.  It was crowded, and the windows were open to the warm night’s breeze.  Like a child, I had worn the same blue cotton dress from my encounter with Sirius.  As if it were just his memory that needed jogging.  

The hours passed.  I managed to choke down half a pint, but the others made up for my sobriety.  Peter was so drunk he could barely hold his head up, and Marlene kept nudging him awake so that we wouldn’t be kicked out. 

After Lily and James’s third, lingering kiss at the table, Sirius had cried, “Alright, we get it!  You’re young and in love!”

“Don’t be jealous,” she brought her drink to her lips.  “We all know I could never take your place.”

James lifted a strand of red hair, pursing it between his nose and lips like a mustache, and we were all still laughing when Sirius suddenly grabbed Mary’s face and kissed her.  It was a joke; the kind of kiss you say out loud; a smacking _“Mwah!”_

But it was enough, and on the walk back to Hogwarts, we all pretended not to notice that they had disappeared into the trees.  Mary was mortified the next day.  Remus didn’t speak to him for a week.  And to me, the ground had opened—it had been only days since the greenhouse.  My expendability left me like a dried husk during a time that should have been spent in happy nostalgia.

I hadn’t seen Sirius since.

He was here, of course; he was the best man.  But that didn’t mean we had to speak.  Cold tap water ran over my wrists and solidified my resolve.  I would spend the evening with Marlene and Peter, and at my first chance, I would go back to the security of Elwood and its libraries, the anonymity and the rigor.

And then, who knew when we’d see each other again.

As I passed down the hallway a flash of movement caught my eye, from a room with its door ajar.  It was a poster of the Haileybury Hammers, decorating the wall of what was unmistakably James’s childhood bedroom.  I paused in the doorway.  Like the den below, it was cluttered, but bore the quietness of a child who had left the nest.  More posters, of Quidditch teams and John Lennon, covered the walls.  A dresser with all its drawers still ajar was lined with books, and I moved inside to read the titles: _Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye_ and _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas._   I smiled.  The books were so very _James._

There was a sudden _CRACK_ from behind me and I jumped.  For a moment, even Sirius was frozen in shock where he had Apparated.  Devastatingly, he was even more gorgeous than I remembered; his wavy hair had grown past his jaw, now shadowed with stubble.

“Chloe.”

But only a second later there was another crack, and Remus spotted me, smiling. 

“Hey!  You made it!”

We embraced.  “Hi, Remus.”

Sirius hung back, keeping his head down as he searched along the dresser for something.

Remus explained, “James forgot his cufflinks.  Can’t get married without them, apparently.”  He seemed a little buzzed, which meant he would be chatty enough to fill the silence. 

I focused all my attention on him.  “Yeah, how is he doing?”

“He’s an absolute wreck, of course.  But in the right way.”

“He’s going to cry _so_ much.”

“Oh, Merlin, loads.I can’t wait.”  He seemed to realize, then, that Sirius was being uncharacteristically silent.  We hadn’t seen each other in a year, and it was as if I weren’t even there.  My gaze dropped to the floor. 

Remus asked brightly, “So, how is Herbology school?”

“It’s good, yeah, thanks.  My parents still think I’m going to Muggle uni, so that’s been interesting.  But I love it, actually.”

“That’s brilliant.”  He lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Hey, you’re not here with _Peter_ , are you?  Like… as a date?”

“Found them,” Sirius interrupted.  His gaze never even turned to me.  “Ready?”

Remus, thoroughly confused, said, “Uh, yeah, sure!  See you out there, Chloe.”

“Yeah, see you.”

With two more echoing _CRACKs_ they disappeared.  I swallowed against the hard lump in my throat.  The cufflinks had been in Sirius’s hand the whole time; I saw them.  He had found them on the dresser as soon as he arrived.  He was just refusing to look at me.

❇

The sun—or the enchantment of it—dipped into the perfect golden hour in time for the ceremony.  I slipped into the back and pressed against the tall wooden fence, where greenery draped onto my shoulders like a comforting hand.  Before the wooden arch hung with flower garlands was a row of happy faces: Marlene, Mary and Alice stood opposite Sirius, Remus and Peter. 

Peter caught my eye and offered a tiny smile, and I felt the corner of my lips twitch, despite my still-hammering heart.  Sirius was reveling in the spotlight, nudging Remus and laughing at something.  When the music began, and James took his place, his eyes were already misting, and I felt the tight fight loosening around my heart.

And when Lily appeared, her hair smoldering against the snow of her dress, all was forgotten.

James did in fact cry, his face still and slick with tears, eyes burning with intensity as Lily read her vows.  I had never seen anyone look at another person like that.  He had always played the clown, and the show-off, but he had never pretended to hide how he felt about her.  Not for years.  Frank officiated, wearing a tuxedo tee-shirt that made Lily’s mother’s toes curl, but they all laughed delightedly upon seeing it.

When Frank shouted, “Lily, you may kiss the groom!” everyone erupted into cheers and applause; a standing ovation.  Even Alastor Moody thumped his walking staff on the ground.

Hundreds of enchanted daisies fell from the sky, and _Wouldn’t It Be Nice_ was blasting from the gramophone.  I realized my own cheeks were slick with tears and smeared them hastily as Lily, James and the others hurried down the aisle, deliriously happy.  We showered them with white sparks from our wands, wrapping them in a tunnel of light.  It felt like protection.

Then a gentle hand was on my wrist: Marlene, all smiles and sunlight, linking our arms like delicate loops in the chain of a necklace.  And despite the gray that hung outside the garden I was tugged gently, time again, to some bright place I hadn’t intended.

❇

 

I had drunk far too much champagne.  The sun had long since set, the guests filing out with exhausted smiles and congratulations, until it was just us.  Like it had been in school.  Mr. and Mrs. Potter watched from the doorway, amused, as we shouted the words to Muggle songs blaring from the gramophone, dancing like fools.  My feet were bare in the grass, my voice hoarse.  The fairy lights that bobbed over us were spinning when Mary handed me another glass and I took it without a second thought.  Every time I spun around Peter was there, smiling and laughing, and I realized it was his hand that was holding mine over my head, twirling me around and around.

“I need air!” I shouted to everyone and no one; the heat of our bodies was stifling.

Passing along the side of the house to the front garden, I sat heavily in the grass.  My dress would be filthy, and it made me laugh.  With my legs splayed out before me I stared up at the sky; at the stars that I knew weren’t real, but in that moment, it didn’t matter.

It was several moments before I realized that Sirius was in the garden, too.  He had been standing beneath a tree, smoking another cigarette.  When our eyes met he emerged from the shadows and came to stand over me.  The silence stretched.

At last he said, “If I never listen to Fleetwood Mac again, I’ll die happy.”

“They’re Lily’s favorite,” I said stupidly.

He nodded, scratching his cheek, and after a moment of hesitation sat beside me.  I could feel the heat radiating from his body in the cool night.  He offered his cigarette and I shook my head.  The music continued to blare from the back garden, but it sounded farther and farther away.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

“With Peter?”

My head snapped in his direction and I said hotly, “Yes, with Peter.  And with Marlene, and Remus, and Mary, and Frank—”

Sirius shrugged, dragging on the cigarette.  “You two seemed friendly back there, is all.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

A smirk was playing on his lips.  “Merlin, you’re feisty these days.”

I didn’t respond, drawing my knees to my chest and hugging them.  I could leave.  I _should_ leave and go back to the warmth of Marlene and the others, instead of remaining in the dampened grass with Sirius Black.

But I wet my lips and said, the anger still in my voice, “You stopped talking to me.”

He looked at me, waiting, and I swore there was nervousness on his face.

“After the greenhouses.  You completely ignored me—and you ignored me earlier today!”

“You said you didn’t want anybody to know.”

“I _didn’t.”_

“So, what was I supposed to do, then?” 

“We could have… I don’t know.  We could have figured something out.”

He laughed quietly; it almost sounded bitter.  “If my memory serves me correctly, _I_ came on to _you_.  Twice.”

Heat flashed across my cheeks.  “That’s not…”  I couldn’t form the words I wanted to, the alcohol tripping my tongue.  “I didn’t mean something physical.  I wasn’t going to wait in the wings until Marlene shot you down again.  I really _liked_ you, Sirius.  I would have—”

I stopped myself.  He had gone still, watching me, expression unreadable.  Could it have truly been surprise?  A part of him must have known all along; he must have seen the downcast glances, the shivers when he passed too close, the lip-bitten catching of my breath.  He must have known.  But now his silence was lasting too long, and I was tired. 

“Forget it.”

I staggered to my feet and snatched the champagne flute from the ground.  It had tipped over, its contents spilled onto the grass.  Sirius still hadn’t responded as I stalked away, but I didn’t expect him to, and he was left sitting alone.  As I said, I was no longer prone to delusions of romance.

When I returned to the others, they had procured an enormous blanket, sitting or lying down in a tangle of happy, drunken exhaustion.  I came to sit beside Peter, and when he cautiously laid his head on my lap I let him.  With my hand resting on the crown of his head, I absentmindedly fingered the tufts of unruly hair, listening to the others’ quiet chatter.  If Sirius ever came to join us, I didn't know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Fleetwood Mac, but certainly did listen to them incessantly while writing this chapter!


End file.
